Between Hope and Despair
by Maren1978
Summary: A terrible accident – a Jeep, smashed almost beyond recognition – not the slightest trace of a certain blond agent… Eventually, the team have to face the fact that they might have lost their friend forever. - No spoilers -
1. Chapter 1

**Hi readers,**

 **This story takes place somewhere in season 2; after Cage left, but before the finale.**

 **I've been writing, rewriting, deleting, changing and correcting this for weeks now and was close to dumping the whole thing countless times already, but I can't get it out of my head. The story idea keeps begging me to write it and won't leave me alone! No matter how hard I tried to convince it to go and find a more skilled writer than I am, I couldn't get rid of it! Therefore, I finally gave in, just to shut it up! ;-)**

 **I think this is about as good as it's gonna get now, so I'm finally posting it. I hope you like it.**

 **Unlike the characters and everything else you might recognize, all mistakes are mine!**

* * *

Summary:

A terrible accident – a Jeep, smashed almost beyond recognition – not the slightest trace of a certain blond agent… Eventually, the team have to face the fact that they might have lost their friend forever.

* * *

 **BETWEEN HOPE AND DESPAIR**

Chapter 1

 _Location: An almost deserted and peaceful coastal road north of L.A., at the crack of dawn_

MacGyver was in a very good mood. After the last few missions, the team had been granted a couple of days off from work. Jack was out of commission anyway, because he was suffering from a bad concussion and wouldn't be cleared by medical for several days, and Mac was out of rotation as well, as he usually wasn't sent on missions without Jack. Besides, he had some cuts and bruised ribs of his own to heal from. Nothing as bad as Jack's head, just a stitched up cut in his side and his ribs were bothering him. He intended to enjoy those precious days the best he could and his vacation plans didn't include any kind of physically strenuous activities, and there wasn't anything that could be done about bruised ribs anyway. Mac had decided to drive up north and visit a science fair. As long as nobody bumped into him too hard in the crowd, he'd be just fine.

Mac had felt bad about leaving his injured partner behind, but Jack had assured him countless times that he didn't need him to stay and watch him sleeping off is sore head. When Mac had argued, Jack had almost literally thrown him out of his apartment and ordered him to enjoy his free time. Finally, Mac had given in.

Riley and Bozer both wanted to catch up on sleep, too. They hadn't been in the field over the last week, but had supported Mac and Jack remotely on their mission and hadn't gotten a good night's sleep for a week either.

Mac wasn't feeling tired at all, although he knew he should. He was fully awake in this early morning hour and felt like he was buzzing with energy. The blond scientist was looking forward to the event a lot! A local polytechnic, which was heavily into Artificial Intelligence, was presenting some of their research and Mac was exited that he would, unexpectedly, get a chance to see it and to talk shop with the experts there a little. He was humming along to the radio in his Jeep, enjoying the drive along the curvy road with the spectacular view onto the Pacific Ocean. He had purposefully chosen the scenic coastal road to his destination over the faster but much more boring Interstate and was greatly rewarded: The sun was just rising, painting the Californian sky in all imaginable shades of red, orange, yellow, purple and pink. He hadn't seen another vehicle for at least ten miles. He was driving at a relaxed speed, already in full vacation mode. Every turn of the road provided him with a new and more beautiful picture than the last one and he was taking it all in as much as he could.

Naturally, he should have known that it was too perfect to last. He just wasn't destined for a vacation without any incidents or catastrophes. However, when he drove along the scenic road, he just felt at peace with himself and the universe. Nothing was going to go wrong today!

Yeah… Right!

Right in the middle of a particularly sharp double-curve, Mac suddenly heard a loud bang from the direction of his left front tire and his Jeep was violently thrown to the left. Instinctively, he gripped the steering wheel tight, desperately trying to keep the skidding car on the narrow road. He groaned loudly. So much for a few days of vacation without anything bad happening! The tires lost traction on the loose gravel that was covering the road and the Jeep slid sideways, completely out of control, towards the barrier separating the road from the roundabout 60-feet-drop into the ocean below.

His brain was doing the math without his consent. Mac knew he was going to hit the guardrail with enough force to knock it flat and there wasn't anything he could do to prevent it. He could only hold the steering wheel steady and pray that the barrier would hold. He squeezed his eyes shut, gripped the wheel with white-knuckled hands and braced himself for the impact. The driver's side of the Jeep slammed into the railing with a deafening crash. The seat belt kept Mac in his seat, but couldn't save him from hitting his head painfully at the car's side, but that was nothing compared to the screaming pain in his already abused ribcage. He felt the railing give way and no matter how much he tried not to, he couldn't help panicking. There was nothing now between him and maybe the two things he was most afraid of in his life: Dying in a fall and dying alone! He sat there, helpless, frozen in his seat, unable to move or make a sound, awaiting the inevitable…

* * *

 _About the densest piece of jungle this small and politically unstable country has to offer... Which country? Uuhm, I could tell you, but… Well, we both don't want that!_

Jack Dalton was running as fast as his legs could carry him through this almost impassable brushwood. His exhausted and aching body was drenched in sweat and he was panting on air that was so hot and humid, it almost gave him the sensation of drowning. In hot water that is. His lungs were craving for oxygen, which they didn't seem to be able to extract from the air around him. But he couldn't stop running! He wouldn't!

The thicket was dense and slowed him down on every step. He stumbled through the tangled underwood, tripped over roots and bit back curses, whenever a root or creeper tripped him or his feet slipped in one of the countless muddy puddles. The only thing that kept him going was the possibility to take the shortcut right through the forest, in order to reach the rebel's trek and get his partner out of their grasp, before they arrived in their camp with him. Mac had been captured while they were spying on them. Their cover had been blown, they had gotten separated and Mac had been snatched, not without putting up one hell of a fight and sustaining a badly bleeding knife-wound to the side before being overpowered. Jack knew that the kid's chances of getting out of there alive would be nearing zero, as soon as he was taken to their heavily guarded headquarters. Jack was on his own; backup was more than four hours away. As Mac was already hurt badly, and this group of dissidents wasn't at all known for showing mercy to spies, the young Phoenix agent certainly didn't have that long!

Suddenly, Jack jumped at the sound of a single gunshot from the direction of the camp. Icy chills ran up and down his spine, as he crossed the last few hundred feet to the edge of the forest. When he reached the clearing where headquarters were located, he lowered himself to the ground behind some bushes and looked around. Several armed men were coming from behind of one of the barracks and entering it, rifles casually hanging over their shoulders, chatting and laughing. Jack's heart dropped. He recognized those men as part of the group that had taken Mac, who was nowhere to be seen. Was he -?

This mission was just about to officially outgrow Cairo!

The older agent surrounded the clearing, to get to the backside of the barracks, where the men had come from, dreading what he was about to find. Careful to stay in the cover of the plants around the clearing, he spotted the footprints the men's heavy boots had left behind in the muddy ground. They led him to a group of bushes and low ferns, where he crouched down to investigate.

What he saw when he pushed the plants apart made his heart turn into a big lump of ice. Something was sticking out of a low mount of dry leaves and branches and he immediately recognized it as one of Mac's boots! He felt his breath catch in his chest, as he hastily uncovered first his friend's legs and then the rest of his body. He lay face down between ferns, hands tied behind his back, unmoving. There was a lot of sticky red in the blond hair. With trembling fingers, Jack felt for a pulse in the kid's neck, but in vain! There was none!

"Nononononoooo! Come on, pal, you can't do that to me!" he hissed through gritted teeth, while he pulled his tactical knife out of his boot and cut through the zip-tie binding Mac's wrists in one swift motion. He quickly turned him over onto his back in order to perform CPR. However, when he saw the small hole right between his partner's half-closed eyes, he let out a strangled cry and just slumped onto the ground by his side, where the cry turned into heart-wrenching sobs. "God, NO!" he hiccupped, his trembling fingers gently brushing blond hair strands out of the kid's white face. "I'm so sorry, brother!"

He had failed to watch his young partner's back and as a result, Angus MacGyver was now dead! He'd been executed without mercy, and without the slightest chance of pulling one of his ingenious tricks, and then dumped in the woods like a sack of garbage and carelessly covered by some plants. His best friend was gone because of his failure and Jack honestly didn't give a damn what happened to himself now. It didn't matter anymore. He knew his boy was beyond help, but he wouldn't leave him alone! Never again!

The only thing the broken man could think of was to take as many of those assholes with him, when they found and killed him, too. He dragged himself to a seated position; legs folded under him, and cradled Mac's head in his lap. His right hand gripped his gun tightly as he sat there, unable, and not even trying, to stop the sobs that were wracking his body, or the tears that were streaming down his cheeks. Nevertheless, he was watching his surroundings closely. He couldn't stand looking at his friend's dead body any longer.

When they came, a minute later or a week, who knew or even cared, his gun-hand was quite steady, every round taking out an opponent with, literally, deadly precision. His years' worth of hard training had taken over, but he was hopelessly out-gunned and all too soon he was stopped by several bullets ripping through his chest. Jack felt like a car hit him, when he was thrown backwards, his gun falling from his limp hand. _See you on the other side, buddy!_ That was his last conscious thought, before his vision clouded, his ears rushed and he hole-heartedly welcomed the all-consuming darkness that swept him away…

Jack awoke with his face pressed into a very wet pillow.

* * *

 _Location: Back at the coastal road, not quite as peaceful anymore_

When, after an eternity, the Jeep came to a halt, Mac sat frozen for almost a full minute, not daring to move a muscle or even breathe deeply. He carefully cracked open an eye squinted through the windows. He immediately regretted it, because a downward glance told him, that the force of the crash must have flattened the barrier and his side of the car was apparently hanging over the abyss…

He finally allowed himself a small sigh of relief, when the vehicle didn't tilt and didn't tumble down the cliff with him in it. He slowly loosened his white-knuckled grip on the wheel, unbuckled his seatbelt and, ever so slowly, shifted his weight towards the passenger's side, away from the deadly drop to his left. As much as he craved to get out of the car rather sooner than later, he avoided any sudden moves. Climbing over to the passenger's side inch by inch sent waves of pain through his body, when every single bruise made itself known. His muscles didn't agree with the strain at all. Under some groaning and swearing, MacGyver made it to the passenger's seat and through the door onto the wonderfully solid ground of the road. He stumbled a couple of steps away from his car and took a moment to catch his breath and to process the fact that he was still alive. _God, I hate heights!_

He definitely wasn't meant for vacationing!

He looked at his beloved Jeep sadly. It was half hanging over the cliff, and by the looks of it, the bent-down guardrail was the only thing that prevented it from falling. Mac was certain that he would be able to fix the damages, but here and now, the vehicle wasn't going anywhere under its own steam. He would definitely need the help of a tow-truck or something to recover it safely. While his mind was working on a way to get to his phone (which was stored in the pouch of the driver's door), without jostling the car, he heard another car approach from the same direction he had come from.

He barely had time to turn around, when the car was already there. Mac had to watch helplessly, as the van misjudged the curve and the skidding rear-end touched his Jeep, tipping it easily over the edge. He screamed in horror, frustration and pain, when he suddenly had to throw himself out of the way and landed on his injured side. The air was knocked out of him. He was lying on the ground, eyes squeezed shut, just trying to breathe through the pain and the shock of the narrow miss, which took a while, as every breath itself was agony on his ribs. He heard someone's footsteps approaching him and tried to pull himself together.

"I'm okay" he mumbled between pained pants, "Just give me a minute..."

MacGyver had expected a lot of things to happen in this situation. Preferably, someone would make sure he was okay and maybe let him borrow their cell phone and let him call for help. Someone panicking, not knowing what to do, wouldn't be out of the ordinary as well, even someone fleeing the scene. What he absolutely didn't expect at all, was...

"Get up!" a commanding male voice ordered.

 _What now?_

He groaned, forcing his eyes open... And looked up the barrel of a gun!

 _Great! Just great!_

"What - Who're - What's goin' on?" he stammered, caught totally off-guard. Instead of an answer, the gun was being cocked.

"Get up! I'm not asking again!" threatened the voice. The gun was steadily pointing at his head. Mac swallowed hard and complied, shooting a death-glare at the man. What choice did he have? Keeping both hands in sight of the masked man, he scrambled to his feet, wincing in pain, his mind swirling. _Vacation... To hell!_

"In the car!"

Hands raised to chest-level, he walked over to the open side door of the dirty-white van. Just as he had reluctantly climbed into it and was about to turn around to face his attacker, arms like steel cramps grabbed him from behind. One hand was under his chin, forcing his head up, the other one pressed a damp cloth over his nose and mouth. Mac instantly recognized the smell of chloroform and instinctively held his breath. He struggled against the hold more and more weakly, acting as if he was slowly losing consciousness. However, he couldn't entirely avoid breathing in some of the vapor. Blackness was wavering around the edges of his vision, when he let himself limply fall onto the van's floor, hitting it harder than he'd planned. His attacker didn't bother catching him to spare him the hard impact. Despite his attempts not to breathe in the sickly-sweet smelling stuff, he must have passed out for a minute or two. When he felt the van starting to move and opened his eyes again, he was tightly bound at his wrists, knees and ankles, gagged with a strip of duct tape over his mouth and had some dark fabric over his head, effectively blinding him. Someone was well prepared for his abduction and his mind was going haywire trying to figure out who it might be. He was halfway certain that he'd never heard the masked man's voice before, so that didn't give him any clue. Instead, he tried to keep track of where they were going, but had to give up on that, too, after about 10 minutes. All he could to now was wait.

 _Not exactly what I had in mind for my vacation…_

* * *

 _Location: Not quite sure where yet_

Jack slowly became aware of his pounding head. That was a headache straight from hell! Someone was working on his skull with a pick-ax - or a sledgehammer, more like. Damn, and he had been so sure that all pain would be gone when he was dead. With a loud groan, he pried his eyes open and saw... nothing. Wherever he was, it was pitch-black there. Or his eyes weren't working, he couldn't figure out which, with his head in this state. His eyes closed again and he tried to let his other senses explore the place instead.

His ears seemed to be working fine, if you didn't count the faint but obnoxious beeping in the background, but he couldn't pick up anything in particular. It was mostly quiet, with an occasional car passing by in the distance. If he thought about it... it sounded exactly like his own bedroom at nighttime. But that certainly couldn't be and the throbbing in his head kept him from following this line of thought any further. Instead, he concentrated on the surface he was lying on. It was smooth, soft, a little damp and felt very familiar. Warm. And safe. Like... home? But... Another thought occurred to him in the middle of pondering on that.

"M'c?" he croaked hoarsely, almost certain that his young friend would be there as well. But there was no reply and he felt no other presence in the room. He just called it a "room" by the lack of a more accurate term. Anyway, wherever he was, Mac seemed to have gone somewhere else. He sighed inwardly.

A fresh wave of pain assaulted his head and he forced himself to breathe slowly and deliberately through his mouth to manage it. Every heartbeat was pure torture in his skull and it took a while, but eventually, the pain subsided. He breathed a sigh of relief. Then it hit him! _Hey, wait a minute! Breathing...? … Heartbeats? Pain? What the –? I'm dead, for heaven's sake!_

The last wave of pain had left his head a fair bit clearer, his thoughts now trickling a little faster through his aching brain. He wasn't a 100 % sure of anything yet, but he was sufficiently certain by now, that breathing and a heartbeat were usually considered signs of life. Dead guys didn't have either, right? And they certainly weren't supposed to feel pain, were they? So, maybe, he wasn't dead after all?

One by one, he decided on a couple of facts, which were a) he wasn't dead, and b) the flat, soft and familiar surface beneath him must indeed be his own bed. That led to c) that last mission gone sideways like that was nothing but one hell of a nightmare! And the most important fact was d) MacGyver was alive, too! Jack almost cried again, this time in relief!

Jack remembered everything now: Bits and pieces of his dream were real. They had indeed infiltrated that group of rebels in the jungle, Mac had been injured with a knife and taken prisoner, but the cut was shallow and he had successfully pulled another one of his miraculous escapes. They had gathered valuable intel on a planned assassination of several high-ranked government members, and the back-up hadn't been hours away, but had just been waiting out of sight for their signal to take the whole group in.

Although he had sorted that out by now, the nightmare still bothered him. He was no stranger to such dreams, especially after demanding missions with narrow escapes, but this one had been exceptionally disturbing. It had felt so real! He still couldn't quite cope with the fact that he had truly believed that he and Mac had died.

But they hadn't. Mac's cut had required a couple of stitches and would soon become a nice addition to his already quite impressive collection of scars, but it was expected to heal just fine. The same went for his bruised ribs. They'd be making any physical activity quite painful for a while, though.

Jack had gotten himself a severe concussion. He couldn't remember what he'd been hit with, but he insisted that it was at least the size and weight of your average cruise ship. Well, deep down he knew that was stretching the truth a little bit, but as long as his head felt the way it did, he was gonna snap at everybody who tried to play it down.

Speaking of his head... it was still killing him! Besides that, other aftereffects of the blow to his head made themselves known now. His mouth felt, as if a small furry animal had died in there, three days ago. The same could be said about his stomach, except there was something wriggly in there, too, which seemed to be very alive. Cold sweat was covering his body and the bed-sheets were all twisted up, due to his turning and tossing. He checked the clock: It showed 6:31. He groaned in disgust and rolled out of bed to shuffle over to the bathroom. Jack barely made it to the toilet, before he had to give in to the irresistible urge to empty his stomach. He rinsed his mouth and splashed cold water on his face and neck. When the rinsing wasn't enough to get the disgusting taste out of his mouth, he also brushed his teeth very thoroughly. He looked in the mirror and took a step back, startled by the worn and bruised face that stared back at him. _Who're you and what're you doin' in my bathroom?_ Looking at his face in the mirror made him question the entire "being alive"-thing again...

Concussions really sucked! And this one was enough to knock three grown men off their feet, at least!

The short trip to the facilities had left him exhausted and shaky. He felt exactly as bad as he looked! He dragged himself back into bed and was asleep within the minute, only to be woken by his doorbell an hour later.

* * *

 _Location: Right in front of Jack's apartment_

Matty Webber climbed the stairs with a heart full of dread and sorrow. She really hated what she was about to do, but she had to. She hadn't even taken the time to truly process for herself what she'd just been told and found out herself. She couldn't afford such thoughts now. She was the one who had to keep it together, stay focused and keep a cool head under all circumstances. She always had to be the calm center of the hurricane, when hell broke loose around her. No matter how hard it was, she had to distance herself from her feelings, stay in control and always see the bigger picture, when the shit hit the fan. And she was good at that! It was one of her many skills that made her such a brilliant director.

Considering the shape her injured agent was currently in, she would have preferred to spare him the bad news until he was feeling better, but that wasn't an option, of course. He had to know! By no means could they keep that from Jack for a day or even more! She almost wished she'd insisted that he stayed in medical the day before, though she assumed that the opportunity to maybe sedate him a little would be way too tempting… Anything to postpone the moment when the full impact of what had happened crashed down on him. However, she couldn't do that. It would only make it worse for Jack in the long run, if that was even possible…

The Director of Operations of Phoenix sighed heavily, then squared her small shoulders and reached up to Jack's doorbell, to wake the poor man from his desperately needed rest.

 _To be continued..._

* * *

 **You made it through the first chapter. Congratulations! ;) Are you in for the ride?**

 **Chapter 2 is mostly written and I have a more or less vague idea where I want to go with this story. I hope it'll work out. If everything goes well, I will have the next chapter ready for posting soon, if you want it…**

 **Please tell me what you think and if I should better stick to my other hobbies. ;-)**

 **One more remark: As you might have noticed, I'm shamelessly inventing locations. I had pictures of the Highway 1 in my head, when I wrote about the coastal road, and adjusted it to the needs of my story. It would be very kind of you if you let me get away with it, for the sake of my story… ;) I'm going to take more liberties with Californian settings in further chapters. I hope you don't mind. After all, I am located roughly an 11-hour-flight away and my short visit to the area was nearly 25 years ago… Yeah, that's right! I am that old! ;-)**

 **Thanks in advance for your understanding!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hi readers,**

 **I greatly appreciate every response to the first chapter. Thanks so much to everyone who read, favorited, followed and/or reviewed! You guys are awesome!**

 **Here comes the next chapter! Enjoy!**

 **Unlike the characters and everything else you might recognize, all mistakes are mine!**

* * *

Summary:

A terrible accident – a Jeep, smashed almost beyond recognition – not the slightest trace of a certain blond agent… Eventually, the team have to face the fact that they might have lost their friend forever.

* * *

 **BETWEEN HOPE AND DESPAIR**

Chapter 2

 _Inside of Jack's apartment_

"I'm dead!" Jack complained loudly from the bedroom, pulling the comforter over his throbbing head and squeezing his eyes shut, when the doorbell rang. "Go 'way!"

His plea fell on deaf ears. The bell rung again and at the same time, he heard his cell phone vibrate on the coffee table in the living room, where he had forgotten it the day before. Before he could even stick a toe out of bed, the doorbell rang a third, and fourth, and fifth time, along with insistent knocking. Jack swore badly. He grabbed his gun from the drawer of the bedside-table and moved over to the door as fast as his protesting head allowed. He peeked through the peephole. What he saw, made him put his gun away, but it worried him considerably. This couldn't mean anything good! He opened the door wearily.

"Matty?! What the hell are you doin' here this early? Leave me alone! No new mission!" Under his breath he added: "I haven't even quite decided whether or not I've survived the last one...!"

Matty Webber's face was dead serious and Jack was sure he detected a trace of something else in her eyes. Was it… Pity? His heart sank right through the floor. He was about to hear bad news, really, REALLY bad news. He knew it!

"Good morning, Jack! You look like crap!" she announced. _Yeah, definitely pity! Shit!_

"Thanks!" he replied with a sarcastic undertone. Then he turned serious. "What's wrong, Matty?"

"May I come in? We better sit down for this..."

Jack swallowed, his guts curling up into a painful knot. With a strong sense of foreboding, he invited his boss into the living room and both sat down side by side on the couch. Jack took a couple of deep breaths, trying to brace himself.

"Spit it out, Matty! Something's wrong with Mac, isn't it?" The knot in his stomach tightened. He knew for sure that, whatever he was about to hear, it would be bad.

"Jack..." The tiny woman hardly ever had to grope for the right words to get any message across and neither was she famous for sugarcoating bad news, but that was clearly, what she was trying to do. However, there didn't seem to be words to put it nicely… Jack's heart turned to ice. He gathered all his courage and locked eyes with his boss.

"Just give it to me straight: How bad is it?"

Matty held his gaze. "Bad!"

That simple syllable slammed into Jack like a bullet. He felt the blood drain from his face. If he hadn't already been sitting, he was sure he would have collapsed on the floor.

"What—What're you sayin'?" he asked in a small voice. "What happened?"

Matty took another deep breath and her face turned sympathetic. Was that moisture in her eyes? Jack's entire world crumbled around him, before she'd even started her next sentence.

"There has been an accident, Jack. Mac's Jeep was found, but there wasn't the slightest trace of him." She hesitated. "He's currently missing."

Jack's hopes rose. "So that's good! He's gotten himself out! He's alive! He's just walked away, confused or disoriented, bumped his head or something... You know how he gets when he's dizzied! We run a search; he has to turn up somewhere!" He almost laughed in relief.

"Jack, the search is being run as we speak." The pity in her eyes intensified. "A team of divers is currently searching the coastline at the place where his Jeep was found."

Jack had to let that sink in for a moment, before he could even start to process what it had to mean. _No! It can't be! This is just another nightmare!_

"Divers?" He almost choked on the word, the short upraise of hope crushed brutally. _Please! Somebody! Wake me up!_

Matty steadied herself with another deep breath. She caught Jack's gaze again, this time definitely with a moist shimmer in her eyes.

"The jeep has broken through the railing of the coastal road up north and fallen into the Pacific! It was found an hour ago, completely smashed and empty. It-" she hesitated again, swallowing hard, "It doesn't look good for him!"

Jack's head was pounding worse than ever, making it hard to think clearly. The nausea was back and he swallowed hard against it. He slumped forward in his seat, elbows on his knees, palms pressed upon closed eyes, trying to shut out the gruesome images that were swirling around in his head, but failing miserably. He saw the kid screaming in terror while tumbling down a steep cliff, trapped in his car; his lifeless body was floating face down in the turquoise ocean water; a black body bag was being zipped closed over his too young face, the once so expressive blue eyes staring unseeingly, empty… He felt himself shudder and slowly became aware of a soothing voice in his ear and small hands squeezing his shoulders, gently but firmly pulling him back to the here and now.

"Jack, breathe with me, slow and easy… in and out… come on, you can do it…"

 _Matty!_

He realized he was panting to the point of hyperventilation. His boss was standing in front of him, talking to him to make him focus on her and on slowing down his breathing. He tried, he really did, but it took him several endless minutes to concentrate on her face and voice and calm down a bit. After all, panicking wasn't going to help anyone, least of all Mac. He couldn't allow himself to go to pieces, if there was even the remotest and most desperate chance that his partner had somehow survived the fall, or better, had gotten out of his vehicle before it went over the rim.

If not…

 _NO WAY!_

He shoved that idea to the back of his mind and locked it away there for now. He was far from having Mac's skills in compartmentalizing, but his extensive training enabled him to focus on a mission completely. With a task at hand, Jack felt his head clear and new energy surge through his body. Mac had to be somewhere! If he was indeed alive - No, scratch that - When they found him alive, he was most likely in dire need of medical attention and didn't have any time to waste. All Jack had to do was find him! Should be easy for a highly trained agent and Ex-special-forces-soldier like him, right?

 _Come on, buddy, after all the shit you've survived, I'm not losing you to a stupid car-accident!_

Jack jumped to his feet, rushed to the bedroom and dressed in what felt like no time at all, his headache apparently forgotten. He reached for his keys, but Matty beat him to it.

"Jack, where are you going?"

"Getting my boy back, of course!"

"You're concussed! You're not driving!"

"Watch me!" He lunged for the keys in Matty's hand, but she dodged him easily and stored the keys securely in her pants-pocket. Jack tried to shoot a full Delta-Dalton-death-glare at her, but he was still unable to focus properly, so it turned out rather pathetic. Well, it wouldn't have worked on Matty, anyway…

"Definitely not!"

"Matty, you can't stop me from –" His voice broke and his shoulders sagged. Matty took pity on him.

"Alright! Against my better judgement, I'm taking you! But you are NOT driving!"

Jack squared his shoulders the best he could. "Whatever… So what are we waiting for?"

Matty shook her head sadly. Sure, Jack belonged flat on his back in bed, but she knew him well enough to know that the only way to keep him there was chaining him to his bed and drugging him for good measure, which she really wanted to avoid. It was better to let him wear himself out and meanwhile keep a close eye on him.

* * *

 _Phoenix Foundation_

 _Somewhere in Los Angeles_

Riley's fingers were whizzing over the keyboard so fast, that they were hardly more than a blur. She had taken refuge on the couch in the war-room, sitting with her legs folded under her, her dark hair a tangled up mess, eyes red-rimmed and face pale. She had her rig doing facial recognition on every camera connected to the internet in any way. That meant traffic cams, surveillance of any kind, webcams, but also private computers, smart-TV's, cell phones, etc. That way, she was making sure that in case her missing friend showed up in front of a camera _anywhere_ in the state _,_ she would be the first to know.

The young hacker also had a software running that was combing through electronic databases. Police records, Coast Guard, hospitals, doctor's offices, morgues, anything. Aside from that, she was monitoring satellite feeds of the area, in order to detect any movement of vehicles. The hacker had been working like this for hours, getting more and more frantic, as time passed. She knew that time was working against them. There had to be something! The alternative was just too horrible to think about! She couldn't even imagine what it would be like if Mac simply never turned up again. A realistic part of her mind was aware of the fact, that this was indeed a possibility, in case his body had drifted away with the receding tide, but so far, she managed to shut that part up. In her opinion, that would be even worse than finding him dead! Riley felt close to Mac, more like a brother than just a friend and colleague, and the prospect of not only losing him, but on top of it being denied the chance for a proper good-bye scared her beyond measure.

And that would be nothing compared to how Jack would feel… She was just as worried about him as she was about Mac. She had serious doubts that he'd be able to deal with losing the kid, not even in the long run. No, it would probably destroy the older man, who had become a father figure for Mac over the years. Since their time in the army, Jack had filled the role of a father in Mac's life much better than his biological father ever had. She could relate to that. Jack was something like a father to her, too, and now, she was worried about the possibility of losing the Jack she knew, too… She quickly returned her concentration back to the task she was best at. Brooding on the What-If's wasn't going to help.

So far, she hadn't found anything that was terribly helpful. There weren't any traffic cams or other surveillance on the road, which made satellite footage her only source of pictures. The problem with those was, that the satellite in question didn't tape a video, but only shot a picture every few minutes, and there didn't seem to be any shots of the exact location around the supposed time of the accident. Only a handful of vehicles were visible on the road. They were hardly more than differently colored dots. A dark red one had to be Mac's Jeep. If Riley let the pictures run in sequence, she could watch it approach a steep double curve. There was one shot showing the car about 50 feet before entering the curve. On the next one, it was just gone. Riley swallowed against the lump in her throat, taking deep breaths. _Pull yourself together, Ri!_ She ordered herself and resumed her analysis of the footage.

Another car caught her eye. Judging by the shape, it seemed to be a van, in some light color; light blue or grey, or maybe beige or white, it was hard to tell. It approached the curve from the same direction Mac had come from, apparently at a higher speed than Mac's Jeep. As the individual shots were several minutes apart on the timeline, it wasn't quite clear whether the two vehicles had met before the accident happened, or if the van passed the spot afterwards. Riley frowned and let the sequence run once more. The gap between the pictures was too large to be certain, but something felt off to her. For her liking, the van took just a little too long to pass the curve for nobody to have noticed anything. The analyst had seen the police shots of the flattened guardrail and couldn't imagine that anyone could pass by that without realizing that very recently something horrible has happened there. For the two cars to have met before the accident happened, the facts didn't add up.

The next car came along about 20 minutes later. The passengers, a family with two teenage daughters in the backseat, had immediately stopped their station wagon and called 911, when they'd noticed the gaping hole in the barrier. By the time the first responders realized that they had to deal with a missing accident victim and the search started, more than another 30 minutes had passed. Overall, it would have been more than enough time for the receding tide to drag a body out into the open sea. Riley's view swam and she blinked tears out of her eyes.

She put trying to find the van and its driver on the top of her mental to-do-list.

* * *

 _The coastal road again, far, far away from peaceful_

Jack didn't remember much of the ride to the site of the accident later. Matty parked the car in front of the police cordon and he got out with a heart full of fear and dread. He knew he had to see it, but he was afraid of what he was about to see. Had his best friend died here this morning?

 _No! He can't be dead! Please, don't be dead!_ Jack desperately repeated it in his head over and over, like a mantra. His insides felt as if they were filled with lead, as he reluctantly followed Matty toward the yellow barrier tape. A young police officer came over to stop them, but Matty just gave her an icy glare. She retreated immediately and let them pass without further interference. Jack ducked under the tape and crossed the site towards the smashed guardrail. His determined stride became more and more reluctant, the closer he got.

The scene was swarming with police, as well as a Phoenix investigation team. Another officer came over to stop Jack, but before he could do so much as open his mouth to protest, he felt the pressure of a small hand on his arm. Matty was beside him and waved the officer out of the way.

Matty strode over to the Phoenix people and Jack followed her, still feeling like this was a bad dream. This couldn't be happening, could it? Matty and the team greeted each other and they talked to Jack, too. He felt himself answer automatically, but didn't take in what was said. He wandered over to the flattened railing on autopilot, ventured a peek down the cliff and had to swallow hard not to throw up again. Heights didn't bother him, but when he saw how deep down the water was, he felt dizzy and his stomach clenched painfully. If Mac had still been in the car when it went down, he was dead for sure. Not a chance anyone could have survived a fall like that, not even MacGyver! Everything was spinning around him, when the realization suddenly hit him full force. His knees buckled and next he found himself kneeling on the ground, panting, hot tears stinging in his eyes, forcing their way out. Matty's hand was firmly squeezing his shoulder, steadying him, at least to the point that he could catch his breath.

She followed his gaze, which was absentmindedly scanning the turquoise surface of the Pacific. Had these beautiful waters really claimed his friend's life? Was his dead body floating in them somewhere?

"We're all gonna miss him." Matty said softly in his ear. He shook his head vehemently, swaying on the spot as his world was spinning, when he got back on his feet.

"He isn't gone!" Jack replied with much more certainty than he felt deep inside. He wasn't sure what made him say it, but he refused to believe it. Not before he saw proof with his own eyes. Not before Mac was found! Admitting to the unthinkable felt like signing his friend's death sentence. As long as there wasn't solid proof, he could cling to hope of finding him alive.

"Jack -!"

"No!" He interrupted her, much harsher than he'd intended. One could measure the amount of her sympathy by the fact that she refrained from any snide comments or retaliations she'd have thrown at him any other day. Matty left him to his own thoughts for now, snapped back into 'boss-mode' and went to gather all information her investigation team had found out so far.

Every fiber in Jack's body refused to accept the facts that presented themselves. As long as he was denying them, there was hope for some miraculous twist of events. They were dealing with MacGyver after all, the guy whose name was a synonym for beating the odds and getting himself out of any, and however impossible, tight spot!

Jack remembered a story Mac had told him some time ago, about some guy with an unpronounceable name with way too many consonants in it… Anyway, that guy had thought of some experiment with a cat in a box, together with deadly poison it could be exposed to or not. (Mac had assured him, that no cat was harmed in this, as it was never actually done.) The crux of it was, that, as long as nobody looked inside the box and checked, the cat would stay in some weird kind of limbo-state between life and death. Both, alive and dead at the same time, until the lid was lifted and its fate was sealed, one way or the other. Somehow, this whole mess felt similar to that experiment. Accepting the worst felt to Jack like letting his friend down, like sealing his fate, making it final. He wouldn't allow that! He couldn't face it! Never…

Movement at the foot of the cliff caught Jack's eye. Two men in black diving suits were disappearing into the water and securing several long steel ropes to something below the surface. The ropes led to a huge crane, which Jack hadn't even noticed until now. His heart sank, if possible, even lower, when he realized what was happening. They were going to retrieve Mac's Jeep!

It seemed to take an eternity until the sorry remains of his friend's preferred means of transportation resurfaced and were slowly but steadily lifted all the way up to street-level. It was hardly more than a badly deformed chassis. The driver's door was hanging crookedly from one hinge; the passenger's door was missing, as well as the tires, mirrors and windowpanes. Water leaked from every possible opening, when the crane carefully put the remnants of the car down on solid ground. The Jeep hadn't fallen straight into the ocean, but hit the rocks several times on its way down, tumbling over and over, and was appropriately distorted. Jack took in the pitiful sight, swallowing hard. Hesitantly, he approached the metal skeleton and dared a look at the soaked insides. Salty water was still dripping out of everything: the seats, the dashboard and every piece of electronic still in place. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find any utilizable traces in this. Everything had most likely been washed away hours ago.

However, the wreck would soon be transported to Phoenix' forensic labs and turned inside out by the experts in order to find even the tiniest hint toward what had led to the accident. Jack had complete trust in the people working there. Those handpicked specialists were among the best in the country. If there were anything that could lead them to finding Mac, or at least to a better understanding of what had happened here, they'd discover it for sure! Considering that, there wasn't anything Jack would be able to contribute here now. Nevertheless, he was desperate to do something… Anything!

Jack leaned his forehead on the edge of the wreck, peering inside. His headache had worsened again. Overall, he felt crappy. He was still having trouble focusing due to his head injury and he couldn't really stick to a line of thought very well. His vision became even more blurred, because his eyes were watering now, and he squeezed them shut, trying to fight down a sob. Out came some kind of choked squeak, which hurt in his throat and arose Matty's attention.

"You need to go home, Jack!" she said softly, fully well knowing that he'd never go without a fight. "You're dead on your feet!"

He lifted his head an inch and started shaking it, but regretted the movement instantly, as his world resumed its spinning and he had to grab hold of the wrecked car for support, until the dizziness passed. He was clearly taking a turn for the worse. Matty had seen enough. She sighed heavily and put on her most serious boss-face.

"Dalton, you listen to me carefully now: You are going home and to bed _right now!_ You're in no shape to be standing upright or walking a straight line, I won't even mention working! You're an inch away from just dropping! So move your ass over to Officer Wilkins' car and he'll drop you off at home, _Where. You. Will. Be. Staying!_ " she emphasized each of the last five words. "…unless you want to spend the next few days cooped up in medical!" she added, glaring at her agent, who was clearly hurting in more ways than one. He looked dreadful: pale, still slightly cross-eyed, head hanging low, holding onto the car wreck for support and looking more like a scolded schoolboy than the seasoned agent he was. Matty's heart broke for him. The fact that he didn't even try to put up a fight showed her how miserable the poor guy was. A wave of sympathy washed over her and she grabbed his left hand tightly in both of her own, her entire demeanor becoming soft, almost motherly. She squeezed his hand again and spoke to him in a low voice full of warmth.

"Jack, I know that you're desperate to do something to help. But there's nothing you can do in your current state. You need rest, or you're going to pass out! Being up and about will just make it worse. Besides, I need people with a clear mind on this. You're too personally involved, aside from too hurt to be out of bed."

Jack looked down and struggled to meet her eyes, but couldn't quite focus. His foggy mind didn't entirely process what she'd said. Otherwise, he would have pointed out, that, as far as Mac or any other member of his team was concerned, he was _always_ personally involved and that had never stopped him from protecting his _family_.

"I need to find him, Matty! I can't just sit on my ass, while Mac needs me!"

Matty noticed the stronger slur in her agent's speech, the expression of devastation on his face, and that he still had to hold onto the wreck for support to stand without falling over.

"Alright, that's it! Trust me when I tell you, that some of the best search teams of the west coast are doing everything in their power to find our boy. I'm taking care of it personally! We've got that covered! You can't even look straight ahead! What do you think you could do to help in the condition you're in? Honestly?"

Deep inside, Jack knew she was right, but it went against every instinct he owned. He yearned to jump into action, to hunt down bad guys, to fight an army; hell, he'd happily search the coastline personally, square-foot by square-foot if he had to. Being sidelined didn't agree with him. It was in his nature to protect, to rescue, to save, and it forbid him to acknowledge that it was, most likely, already too late for that. That idea frequently haunted his worst nightmares, but it couldn't ever happen in real life! Or could it? _NO!_ He was, of course, fully aware of the fact, that in their line of work, the chances of retiring at a ripe old age were quite slim. He had made his peace with putting his own life on the line long ago, for the success of a mission and, especially, to keep his genius partner and best friend safe. He'd put himself in the line of fire any day, if that was what it took. Losing the boy simply wasn't an option! Just to think about that was so incredibly painful; it was literally un-think-able!

Somewhere along this line of thought, Jack had squeezed his eyes shut. The bright sunlight was hurting them. Firm hands grabbed him under his arms and helped him to his feet. When had his knees given way? Two police officers were half guiding, half supporting him over to the police-car, which was supposed to be his ride home. The two officers shoved him into the back of the car and helped him to buckle up. Jack sat slumped in the seat, all the fight gone from his body, along with the receding adrenaline rush of the last hours. By now, trying to remain conscious took all his strength. However, it was a losing battle. He had fallen into a daze within the first minutes of the ride.

 _To be continued..._


	3. Chapter 3

**Hi readers,**

 **On with the next chapter! :-)**

 **Unlike the characters and everything else you might recognize, all mistakes are mine!**

* * *

Summary:

A terrible accident - a Jeep, smashed almost beyond recognition - not the slightest trace of a certain blond agent - Eventually, the team has to face the fact that they might have lost their friend forever.

* * *

 **BETWEEN HOPE AND DESPAIR**

Chapter 3

Mac was still feigning unconsciousness on the hard floor of the van, while his brain was working overtime. He heard two male voices talking to each other in the front, but they were too low to understand anything and he was lying too far away from the front seats to hear them properly. Mac carefully inched closer to the front, gratefully accepting the help provided by a sudden breaking maneuver. He used his momentum to slide towards the front, rolling over his stomach and coming to rest with his bound hands under the passenger's seat. He had already managed to loosen his bonds enough to get some circulation back into his hands, but he still couldn't get free, and that annoyed him to no end! His fingers groped under the seat for any sharp edge he could use to saw on the rope.

A sticky wetness in his shirt told him that his knife wound was bleeding again after all his rolling around; and as expected, his ribs weren't too thrilled about that, either. _So much for no physical activity…_

They seemed to be travelling through heavy traffic now. Mac heard a lot of other cars around. The van must have left the curvy and rocky road, because the street under its wheels was smooth now and they were travelling at a much higher speed. The car was jerking left and right nonetheless, most times accompanied by angry honking and squealing tires around them. With that driver, Mac started to worry that he might be going to die in a in a car crash after all…

In the front seats, the two voices had started arguing and he was finally able to hear what they were saying.

"What're you snapping at me for? Whose bright idea was it to drag sleepyhead back there along? Little hint: It wasn't mine!" That man was obviously the slightly suicidal driver, as his voice came from the left.

"And what do you think we were supposed to do? You were the one who drove like a maniac and first pushed his car down the cliff and then almost ran him over. He saw us; he saw your car and he saw your license plates! Don't you think he _might_ remember us?" Mac recognized that voice. It was the man, who'd so nicely invited him to join the ride.

"Even if I'd been slower... He woulda stopped us for help anyway!"

"If f you'd just listened to me, we'd never have taken that lonely road! It's much easier to disappear in heavier traffic!"

The driver fell silent. Mac lay there, wondering what had he gotten himself into this time. Those two clearly weren't amateurs. They were well prepared for the kidnapping and they sure knew how to tie up a person effectively, to Mac's great dismay. Otherwise, they fell for his acting with the chloroform, which was the oldest trick in the book. Thus far, Mac couldn't make head nor tail of them. From what he'd just overheard, he gathered that he'd stumbled into a classic 'wrong time, wrong place'-kind of situation. But how did that fit with them being this well prepared? They'd had the full 'equipment' handy, including a chloroform-soaked napkin! Who carried such things around?

"And what are we supposed to do now? With him?" the driver retorted, panicking slightly.

 _Yeah, I'd like to know that, too!_

"We keep him."

 _Uuhm…_

"Brilliant!" The driver's tone dripped with sarcasm. "And would you, in your inexhaustible wisdom, care to share the rest of your plan with the class, professor?"

 _Thanks, I was just gonna ask that!_

"Hey! Don't you dare talk to me like that! We wouldn't even be in this mess, if you hadn't chickened out and let that girl get away!"

 _Girl? Does that, by any chance, explain your being prepared for a kidnapping?_

"Oh, that's _my_ fault now? You didn't even see that police car coming along. We couldn't possibly grab her in front of them, screaming and fighting as she was! We'd both be in a cell by now, if I hadn't spotted them!"

 _Well, that's not a bad place for you to be, if you ask me!_

The other man replied something in a voice too low for Mac to catch.

The driver snorted incredulously. "Pissed? _PISSED_?! We _failed!_ If he finds us, we're _dead_!"

Again, he couldn't hear the answer. They appeared to be improvising wildly. His two new 'companions' seemed to be the failed kidnappers of some girl, who'd put up a fight and got away. They were obviously on the run from somebody, presumably their boss… _Way to go, girl!_ He thought, hoping she was fine, whoever she was…

"Turn right!" the man in the passenger's seat commanded and the van immediately jerked to the right. Mac had to grip the brace, which he was using to saw on the rope, more tightly to keep his hold. He bit back a groan, when his fingers felt as if they were about to be ripped off. He didn't want his captors to know he was awake yet. He was much more likely to find out more, if they thought he was still out. He'd have to give it up soon enough to be convincing.

"Where are we going, anyway?" the driver asked.

 _Another excellent question!_

"You just drive where I point you! I know just the place where we can keep him safe while we decide what to do with him."

 _May I make a suggestion?_

Silence.

 _Didn't think so…_

The vehicle had obviously left the paved road and was now moving over loose gravel, bumping through potholes and over rocks. Mac had managed to cut a short way into the rope binding his hands, but at this rate, it would take him several hours to get loose. That edge simply wasn't sharp enough for the thick and sturdy rope! On the uneven ground that served as a road, he had to put that task on hold, anyway, as he needed both his hands to keep his grip on the brace. He didn't want to roll or slide away from it when the car jerked. With a pang, he thought of his Swiss Army Knife in his jacket; the same jacket that had slid to the floor in front of his Jeep's passenger's seat, when he'd crawled over it. It had gone down with the car, along with his phone, his wallet, his duffel bag and everything else he happened to keep in there. He sighed inwardly.

* * *

 _The street in front of Jack's apartment_

When Matty had informed him about what had happened, Bozer had rather reluctantly volunteered to stay with Jack to keep an eye on him. It was the most useful thing he could possibly do to help right now; and he most certainly had to do something! Matty's visit had hit him like a rock, and he still couldn't believe what she'd told him. Everything had been perfectly fine the evening before. Well, not counting Jack's head, of course…

Riley was frantically searching every available electronic source of information for anything that could help them locating their missing teammate. If she could help it, she wouldn't even break for a pee, before she'd found something useful. Jack was not only out of commission, but also bound to do something stupid, if left to his own devices. In his current state, his judgment wasn't to be trusted. This left Bozer to keep an eye on him. The newly appointed agent was pretty nervous about this task and had wanted to refuse at first, but Matty had convinced him, that Jack was in desperate need of a friend to look after him. Bozer had finally agreed.

Aside from contributing something useful, staying with Jack gave him an excellent excuse for postponing his return to the empty house. He dreaded that moment! If his best friend and roomie really didn't come back, he had no idea, if he'd ever be able to sleep in it alone! He dearly hoped it wouldn't come to that!

Thus, the newest member of the team was now waiting in his car in front of the house where Jack had his apartment. Matty had kept him updated that Jack was due any minute now. His mind wandered back to the day before, his stomach churning. MacGyver had been looking forward to his trip like a child about to visit Disneyland. He had been literally buzzing with excitement! The young blond had left before the crack of dawn this morning without waking his roomie. Then, everything had gone so terribly wrong!

Bozer knew, naturally, that in their line of work they all potentially risked their lives on every mission. But Mac hadn't been on a mission! All he had wanted was spend a couple of days on his own, to relax, to recharge his batteries and to get his head free. Instead, he was now missing from the scene of a freak accident and everybody seemed to believe he was dead! Bozer sighed heavily and swallowed. He wouldn't believe that! It couldn't be true! His friend always came through somehow, not necessarily unscathed, but he was a born survivor. Always had been!

However, there was that nagging voice in his head, which kept reminding him that Mac certainly wasn't immortal and his chances of turning up alive were fading by the minute. As his thoughts were growing darker, Bozer was glad to be interrupted by the approaching police car. He got out of his own car and greeted the two officers.

When Bozer became aware of the slumped figure in the back seat, his heart dropped. Jack hadn't moved at all since the car had stopped. He seemed to be out cold. Bozer reluctantly opened the back door, suddenly dreading his upcoming task. Nevertheless, a promise was a promise, so he took a deep breath and gently shook Jack's shoulder, jerking him to something that resembled awareness. The older man looked at him wearily, struggling to focus on his face.

"Come on, old man, let's get you to bed, where you belong!" Bozer teased, somehow managing to sound much more lighthearted, than he felt. He intended to keep it together as much as possible, at least in front of Jack. He felt responsible for taking care of his missing friend's partner and that meant he had to stay strong for him. He was sure gonna try, but he didn't think he could keep it up for long.

He helped the older agent to heave himself out of the back seat. Wilkins handed Bozer Jack's keys, which Matty had given to him earlier, and the young man took the lead up the stairs to Jack's front door. He opened it wide, so the two officers could guide Jack to the couch to settle him down.

"Thanks for your help! I take it from here." He said good-bye to the officers and turned to his 'patient'.

"Off to bed, man!" Bozer went to the bedroom to replace the sweaty sheets, but Jack's hoarse voice called him back.

"Don't bother, Boze… I'll just stay here on the couch." He said, sounding as if his was twice its usual size.

"The couch it is then. Alright, lie down." Bozer returned with some blankets, which he spread over his friend, just stopping himself from tucking them in. Jack was already snoring. Bozer dearly hoped that he'd be getting the rest he needed so badly, but he didn't expect it to last very long. Sure enough, hardly half an hour later, when the young man was busy trying to magic the meager contents of Jack's fridge and freezer into something that would agree with an upset stomach, he heard loud moaning from the living room.

He found his sleeping colleague in obvious distress. His face was screwed up in fright, a layer of sweat had appeared on his forehead and his whole body was writhing on the couch. His feet were trapped in the twisted up blanket and the pillow had been knocked to the floor. Bozer resisted the impulse to shake him awake. Being MacGyver's roommate by the time the EOD tech had returned from Afghanistan had given him enough, partly painful, experience with flashbacks and nightmares to keep well out of Jack's reach. Instead, he talked to him calmly and soothingly, hoping to calm him. It was no good.

"Mac! Nooo!" Jack cried out. "Come back, damn it!" He sounded so desperate, that Bozer didn't even want to think about what he might be seeing.

"NOOOOOOOO! MAAAAAAAC!" Jack bolted upright screaming, breathing hard and shaking, his wide-open eyes wet.

"Jack? Are you with me?" Bozer asked tentatively and Jack slumped back into a horizontal position.

"Think so." He murmured. He rubbed his burning eyes, leaving them even redder than before, "Nightmare…"

"No kidding!" Bozer let himself sink to the couch next to Jack's feet. Both men sat in silence for a minute. Suddenly, the hobby-cook remembered the vegetable-soup he had left simmering on the stove. "Hungry?"

Jack sighed, considering it. When had he last eaten? He couldn't remember. Hadn't he puked this morning, too? "I should be, I guess…" he trailed off. "I need the bathroom first!" He lifted himself off the couch and left into the hallway. He seemed to feel a bit better. Well, at least he could walk without swaying now. Bozer went back to the kitchen, determined to get some food into his teammate.

As long as he busied himself with something, Bozer thought he could keep it together for a while. He was worried sick, of course, but he was also full of hope that everything was going to turn out fine. Being the very positive person he was, sure helped as well. While he rounded off the soup with some of the condiments Jack had in stock, he never left his phone out of his sight. Not for all the pastrami in the world did he want to miss any news from Matty or Riley! So far he'd been able to keep himself from texting them every five minutes.

"Didya hear anything?" Bozer jumped. He hadn't heard Jack enter the kitchen, before the Ex-Delta spoke right next to his ear. He figured if the man was capable of sneaking up on him like that again, he must be feeling better.

"Don't _do_ that! You're giving me a heart attack!"

"Do what?"

"Never mind… Feeling any better?"

"I will be, as soon as you tell me that Mac is goin' to be OK."

"I'd love to, man! But I haven't heard anything and I won't lie to you."

* * *

 _Phoenix Foundation_

Riley barely looked up from her computer screen, when Matty strode into the war room. She just nodded at her boss and kept working furiously.

"Did you find anything?" Matty asked. Riley sighed.

"Not much yet. Facial recognition came up with nothing so far. The same with the database search, but that one's still running. As far as we know, he hasn't turned up anywhere in the state, neither alive, nor—" She gulped, the word 'dead' stuck in her throat. She wiped at her eye and went on "Nothing on the dark web so far… I've checked all our usual suspects, too, just in case, but found nothing unusual. There's something odd on the satellite feed of the coastal road, though…" The hacker hit a couple of keys and the sequence of satellite shots played on the big screen again. Both women watched closely, as the light-colored, bigger spot neared the red spot Riley had identified as Mac's Jeep, and the darker, smaller one vanished between two of the shots.

"Anything on that van?" Matty asked. Riley shook her head in frustration.

"It left the road on the next exit. I tracked it down the highway and lost it on the Interstate! There are just too many of those vans!" She rubbed her stinging eyes. "I narrowed it down to about 20 potential registrations, which I'm checking out one by one, but I'm not sure if the right one is among them! I'd really like to know who can drive by a recently smashed down guardrail, which clearly hasn't been secured yet, without alerting anyone! I just don't get it! For all I know, that van could easily have run him off the road in the first place!" She had talked herself into a rage. "Even if it didn't…" She paused, breathing deeply to regain her composure. "20 minutes, Matty! Help could have arrived 20 minutes earlier, if they'd just made one freaking phone call!"

Matty squeezed her arm in sympathy.

"You find them, Riley! If anyone can, it's you!" She left.

"Yeah…!" Riley mumbled and went back to her work.

* * *

 _Back inside the van_

Mac had finally stopped pretending to remain unconscious, after the men had fallen silent. He'd already stretched it as long as he could possibly be convincing. Luckily, the two goons hadn't paid him any attention throughout the ride. When he started to stir, moan through the gag and struggle against the bonds to give the impression of just waking up, they were finally reminded of his presence.

"Look who's finally awake!"

As his captors hadn't planned to grab him and thus most likely didn't have a clue that they'd just kidnapped a secret service agent, said agent decided to keep this particular piece of information to himself. As long as he kept up the pretense of the regular random accident victim - which he actually was in this case - he was quite certain that he'd find a way out of this. He'd definitely escaped from much more hopeless situations than this!

That meant, that it was time for some more acting on his part. He needed to appear as harmless and nonthreatening as possible, and he figured that a little panic attack after waking up bound, gagged and blindfolded would be appropriate. He intensified his struggling and moaning and breathed hard and audibly until he was feeling lightheaded. Thrashing around, he found the sidewall of the van and pressed his back against it, pulling up his knees towards his face as far as the restraints allowed. When he heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked, he pressed himself even harder into the wall and emitted distressed little sounds through his nose.

"You keep this racket up and you're dead, pal!" Mr. Gunman threatened him again.

Mac pretended to freeze and immediately stopped making any noise.

"There ya go! You be a good boy and do as I tell you and no one need get hurt! You got that?"

Mac nodded shakily under the hood. He heard the safety of the gun sliding back in place and relaxed a visible fraction. _So far, so good!_ They seemed to have bought it for now. For all they knew, they didn't have any reason to suspect him of being anything but a rattled accident victim, who had just missed death by inches twice within two minutes! Taking him had been ridiculously easy, considering his abilities and training! Just to be on the safe side, he secretly nestled with the rope, which he'd sawed into earlier, to conceal the cut under another layer of rope, so his handiwork wouldn't immediately be obvious.

Finally, after an especially bumpy part of the road – or rather _not_ road – the van stopped and the men got out. The side-door slid open and one of the men grabbed Mac by his arms and dragged him out of the vehicle. Mac really had to fight to keep himself from wriggling and kicking out, when the other thug grabbed his feet and they carried him – Somewhere. It was awkward as hell to allow those two clowns to carry him like that, but it wasn't like fighting would have gotten him anywhere… Except maybe hurt. As long as he was bound and blindfolded like that, he had no chance of escaping, anyway.

He couldn't see, but he could hear, feel and smell, and those other senses told him, that they were in a forest. The air felt cool and carried the unique scent of a mixed forest; he heard birds singing and trees moving in a light breeze. The trees above him seemed to be dense, because he couldn't feel any sunlight on his skin. The men's footsteps were muffled on the soft forest ground.

After a short while, the ground changed, and so did the air. Mac could now hear gravel crunching under the men's shoes, and the air became cooler, damper and a little stale. Judging by the reverberating sounds, they had entered some kind of building, or a cave. Yeah, that was it! They obviously followed the cave along a couple of turns, until they finally lowered him to the cold rocky ground. Hands wound more rope around him and tied him to a rock. Someone was really thorough with making sure he didn't go anywhere by himself!

"We don't want you to crawl off on your own, do we?"

 _You can't keep me from trying!_

"We'll be back shortly. You wait here!"

 _Hah hah, very funny!_

Mac was frustrated beyond endurance by the time the two men left him alone. He still hadn't managed to loosen his bonds any further and neither had he had any success with getting rid of the hood. It was bound tightly around his neck - not tight enough to choke him, but too tight to get it off his head. A small victory was, at least, that he'd been using his tongue and spit to loosen the duct tape and had finally managed to get it off his lower lip and chin, which allowed him to breathe through his mouth. That was a great relief, because the fabric of the hood was dense and he had to keep it close to his face to get enough oxygen through it.

His captors returned more than two hours later. By that time, Mac was violently shaking from the cold, because his body heat was sucked away by the rocky ground through his thin clothing. If they didn't relocate him to somewhere warm soon, or at least freed him from his restraints so he could move to get warmer, hypothermia would become an issue.

The men picked their freezing prisoner up by the arms and feet again and he felt himself being carried up a steep ascent, on top of which they once more laid him down. He heard some moaning and groaning, a grinding noise of stone on stone, then some shuffling and was once more grabbed by the arms and dragged over the rough ground and through a hole in the rock ,by the feel of it. And here, they finally, _finally,_ started to remove his bonds! Mac couldn't suppress a relieved sigh when his hands were freed. His shoulders were stiff and hurting pretty bad after the hours they'd been forced into the uncomfortable position with his hands tied behind his back. He rolled his shoulders to ease the cramps in them and flexed his numb and cold fingers. While his legs and feet were being freed, he was finally allowed to sit up, take off the hood and pry the rest of the tape away from his skin. He started to look around in the scarce light of a flashlight. The three of them were in a high-ceilinged chamber, which they had entered through a hole in the wall just large enough for a grown man to crawl through.

"Welcome to our little hideout!" Mr. Gunman greeted him mockingly. Mac caught himself just in time before a Riley-level eye-roll. Instead, he fearfully eyed that damn gun, which was pointing at him again, to keep up his act.

"Wha- What do you w- w- want?" he stammered. "What's g- g- gonna happen to me? Please! Don't hurt me!"

"You'll be our guest for a while!" Mac looked around and shuddered visibly, which he didn't even have to fake.

"What? Why?"

"You'll give us a number of your folks, where we can reach them!"

Mac stared at the man, dumbstruck. "My - folks? You- want to call my _parents_?"

 _Seriously?_

"Yeah! What's wrong with that?"

"Well… My mom died when I was 5 and I haven't seen my father since my tenth birthday!"

"That's very heartbreaking and all, but someone's gotta miss you, right? Wife? Girlfriend? Family of any kind?"

 _Oh, that's perfect! I was trying to figure out a way to send Jack a message all day! Now, they're gonna do it for me…_

"What do you want from them?"

"Well, we're running a little low on cash, considering we both lost our- uhm- job this morning. So if I were you, I'd hope that someone'd miss me bad enough to provide us with some money to start our- new life."

"How do I know that you're really gonna let me go?"

"Well, you don't! But we're no murderers. We just want the money and be gone. As soon as we're safe, we'll send the coordinates where to find you and your people can come get you."

Neither Jack, nor Phoenix, nor anybody else was going to send a single cent without proof that they had him and that he was alive and well. However, he needed them to alert Phoenix; he'd be out of there in no time!

"Call Jack!" He answered.

"Jack? Jack who? Who's he?"

"My friend."

"Your _what_? Geez, I knew something was off with you!"

Mac stared at him in exasperation. "Not my _boy_ friend!"

"Whatever suits you… Is he rich?"

Mac knew better than to answer that. Mr. Gunman let his gaze wander up and down his body, sizing him up.

"What do you think you'll be worth to him? He'll want you back badly, won't he?"

 _You have no idea! But for other reasons than what you're thinking…_

"He's not terribly wealthy..." Mac replied vaguely.

"He'll have to cough up some cash, if he wants you back in one piece! Now, you'll write down his number here!" He shoved a notepad and pen towards Mac, who took both and scrawled down Jack's cell phone number with numb and shaky fingers. Mr. Gunman took it, ripped the sheet with the number off, folded it up and put it into his pocket. Then, he gestured at the driver, who hadn't said a single word throughout the entire conversation, silently waiting and watching in the shadowy background, constantly pointing another gun at him.

"Get the rope!"

The second man nodded, vanished through the hole and returned immediately with a long and sturdy climbing rope. "Time to get you settled in." he said to his captive.

Mac stiffened. "You're gonna tie me up again?" he asked, dread audible in his voice.

"Don't worry, we don't need to. If you are up to a little rock climbing, that is." He waved the flashlight towards the other side of the chamber, opposite of the small hole that served as an entrance. Mac's heart clenched. In the faint glow of the flashlight, he saw that the cave's floor ended about a foot away from where he was crouching on the ground, creating an abyss inside the cave. The young agent didn't need any explanation. He knew, what was coming, and glancing down into the deep hole in the ground, he was remotely reminded of a well shaft. The dim beam of the flashlight hardly reached the ground! He estimated it to be at least 20 feet deep, as far as he could tell with the little light, and narrow. He shrank back from the hole, his heart and breathing picking up speed.

Mr. Gunman, correctly interpreting his reaction, smiled at him coldly. "It's either that, or you're staying up here, all tied up. Your choice!"

MacGyver watched, as the silent driver fixed the rope to a ledge above the opening. When he hesitated, he received a threatening wave with the weapon. "Go ahead! You have 10 seconds to start climbing, or you'll be tied up for quite a while!"

Between staying in restraints for who knows how long, the gun and climbing into that hole, he'd go for the 3rd option any day. He tested the rope for a moment, found it securely attached to the ledge and thus started his descent carefully, aided by the faint beam the flashlight provided from above. As soon as he reached the ground, the light vanished and so did the rope, which was quickly and forcefully pulled out of his grasp.

"Hey!" he yelled upwards, "What about some light? Water? Oh, and maybe you could turn up the heating a bit? It's kinda chilly down here!" He heard the two men laugh.

"Stand back!" Mac instinctively pressed himself against the rocky side of his prison and heard something heavy land hard on the ground next to him. "That'll have to do for now. Make yourself comfortable! We'll be back with some water later tonight. If your not-boyfriend plays nice, we might even toss you some food!"

 _Lovely!_

"He's gonna want to talk to me!"

"He's gonna have to play by our rules, if he wants this to end well for you!"

With that, the kidnappers left him alone and in total darkness. However, he had complete trust that Jack would come and get him out of there before he even knew it, as soon as he'd receive the ransom call. Those clowns wouldn't know what hit them!

 _To be continued..._

* * *

 **What do you think? Shall I go on? ;-)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Hi guys,**

 **This story is kinda running at its own pace and dragging me along now. It is more or less writing itself at this point. I feel like I've lost control over it completely! :D**

 **All I can do is trying to type it fast enough, while my real-life tries everything to keep me from it...**

 **I was suuuuuuper nervous before posting the first chapter! To tell you the truth, I was shaking like a leaf when I finally hit that button, but I'm absolutely overwhelmed by all the nice and supportive response I receive. I just want to shout out a huge 'Thank You' to everyone who's still in for the ride! I can't tell you how much that means to me!**

 **Unlike the characters and everything else you might recognize, all mistakes are mine!**

* * *

Summary:

A terrible accident – a Jeep, smashed almost beyond recognition – not the slightest trace of a certain blond agent… Eventually, the team have to face the fact that they might have lost their friend forever.

* * *

 **BETWEEN HOPE AND DESPAIR**

Chapter 4

 _Jack's apartment_

With the help of some hot soup and a dose of a light sedative and painkiller from Phoenix medical that Bozer had sneaked into Jack's water bottle, the concussed man was finally getting some sleep. It was restless and he twitched and moaned frequently, but he didn't wake up screaming, at least. Bozer had settled into one of the armchairs, remote control in hand and was absentmindedly zapping through the channels without really seeing what was on. He needed it more for some background noise aside from Jack's pitiful moans, than because he wanted to watch. He had already done some cleaning, changed the sheets in the bedroom and started the washing machine with the sweat-soaked ones. Then he had prepared sandwiches for dinner, which were now waiting in the fridge for Jack to wake up. He had finally run out of tasks to keep himself busy, which he could perform without waking the sleeping agent on the couch. After some nervous pacing that would have made Jack proud, he'd finally sunk into the armchair, where he was left with nothing to distract him from the dark thoughts that crept past his facade. As time passed without the relieving phone call or message, Bozer found his usual positive thinking increasingly hard to keep up.

By the time Jack jolted awake, it was late afternoon. The injured man was sitting up and looked around his own living room with a puzzled expression, as if he'd never seen it before. His eyes fell on Bozer and he frowned, blinking several times, his brows almost touching each other above his nose.

"Boze?" He asked tentatively, but with a firm voice, "What are you doing in my living room?"

Bozer jumped. _Oh NO! He_ _doesn't remember!_ Jack looked at him with eyes completely focused for the first time since he had returned from the mission and he was speaking clearly, with no hint of a slur. He still looked like he hadn't slept for a week, but he was alert and much more with it now. _Here comes the hard part…_ Bozer sighed inwardly.

"Hey Jack, ol' man! You look much better! How's the head?" He greeted in an overly cheerful voice. Jack absentmindedly prodded the egg-sized lump at the back of his skull and winced. He stared at the young man in his armchair confusedly, his eyes narrowed to slits and his brows nearly touching again.

"Boze? Bo-zer! What is going on?" He emphasized each syllable. Bozer took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"You took quite a blow to the head, my friend! You've been pretty out of it for the last- uhm- two days. What do you remember?"

"Not much, really… A couple of hellish nightmares…" he trailed off, thinking hard. "For starters, I have no clue how I came to sleep on the couch in broad daylight and what you're doing here. Come to think of it, it scares me a bit! No offense, but after all those bad dreams, I'd have preferred to wake up to somebody else… Where's the kid, by the way?"

Bozer's face fell, as his insides curled and twisted and a huge lump formed in his throat. He tried to swallow it down, but couldn't get rid of it. Of course, Jack caught up on the cascade of emotions that washed over his face!

"Bozer? What is going on?" Jack asked firmly with a mixture of anger and fear in his voice.

"Jack, you've had some pretty bad nightmares, but—" he swallowed and took a deep breath, "the car accident wasn't- one of them! I wish it was…" Bozer blinked rapidly and looked away, not able to withstand Jack's horrified gaze. When he looked back at the older man, he almost toppled out of the armchair in fright! To say that Jack was looking furious would have been the understatement of the century. He looked downright murderous! Bozer had never seen Jack's usually kind and warm brown eyes narrow and flash with barely controlled fury like that, especially not directed at him. His face was contorted in anger and the ex-Delta-soldier looked ready to lunge at him and kill him with his bare hands, which, as the nagging voice in Bozer's mind reminded him without being asked, he would have been perfectly capable of.

With a cry like a wounded tiger, Jack struck and Bozer cowered. But fortunately, Jack wasn't aiming at his friend. His outburst of uncontrolled rage sent the coffee table flying across the room, crashing into the opposite wall and splintering. With two large strides and another inhuman cry, Jack followed it and drove his fist into the concrete wall, covering the wallpaper with bloody prints from his busted knuckles as he pummeled it.

"Stop it, Jack!" Bozer screamed in shock and horror. "You're hurting yourself!"

Jack didn't stop for several more heavy blows, which left his right fist a bloody mess. Bozer couldn't do anything but watch helplessly, until the older man first slowed and finally ceased his attack. He turned and leaned his back against the blood-stained wall, staring at his mutilated hand as if he didn't know how he'd gotten hurt. Bozer winced in sympathy and cautiously approached him.

"It's OK, I saw everything. You were just defending yourself."

Jack looked in his direction, but seemed to focus on a spot a mile behind Bozer, his eyes narrowing dangerously again.

"May I have a look?" Bozer nodded at the bleeding hand, but Jack wasn't through.

"Not important! I'd rather hear why you sat here and watched me sleep," he hissed through gritted teeth, "when I should have been doing my fuckin' job!" Jack was shaking, barely containing his white-hot anger at everyone and everything that had kept him from searching and finding Mac himself.

"Jack, please! Calm down just for a minute and listen—" Bozer addressed him with all the authority he could muster, cringing inwardly at the sight of raw emotion on the older man's worn face.

"If you're going to tell me that Mac's still missing, save your breath!" he shouted at his scared colleague. "How dare you keep me in here while the kid needs me? I can't believe you've done that! And now you get your stinkin' ass out of my place!" Jack pointed at the door with a trembling hand. Bozer gulped, but stood his ground.

"Sorry, can't do that! Matty's orders!"

"Screw her!" he spat.

Bozer squared his shoulders. "Jack, please, give me two minutes! Just two! If you want to throw me out after that, there's nothing I could do about that, but I need you to listen!" He looked at Jack, uncertain whether the older man would lash out at him, but not faltering. Jack's jaw muscles worked visibly. Bozer waited with baited breath, until…

"Time's counting!" Jack growled.

Bozer straightened. _OK, you can do this!_ "Thanks! Alright, first of all, the reason, why we let you sleep, was the shape you were in, after some jungle-rebel almost smashed your skull. You were barely conscious. Matty even tried to take you with her to the crash site, despite the fact that she'll have to answer to the Doc afterwards. You weren't even able to stand properly and had to be carried home by police. This is about the first lucid moment you've had in the last two days." He paused to take a breath. When Jack didn't say anything, he went on. "Matty is pulling every string available to her to find him, and you know that's saying something! Riley is working her tail off since early this morning, as well as several other Phoenix teams." Bozer's voice had become less and less steady throughout his monologue. He had to gulp, before he finished.

"Besides… He is my friend, too, you know?" His voice cracked and he couldn't speak anymore, tears glistening in his dark, gentle eyes. He hung his head, awaiting whatever the hurting agent in front of him was going to throw at him.

Jack stood unmoving for a couple of seconds, staring at Bozer, conflicting emotions flickering across his face, until his knees buckled and he slid down the wall. He finally sat on top of the splintered mess that had once been his coffee table, his elbows on his bent knees, head resting on his hands and looking completely deflated. His shoulders heaved with heavy breaths.

"I'm sorry, Boze!" he muttered. "I didn't mean to jump down your throat. God, I'm so sorry!" He broke off, a sob escaping him. Bozer sat down next to him, feeling it would be save now, and put a hand on his shoulder.

"It's okay, man. I kinda expected something like that, to tell the truth."

"I'm sorry... I'm just so- I don't know- helpless…" he trailed off. Both sat in silence for a moment, trying to regain some control. "I don't do helpless very well!" Jack confessed. Bozer nodded at his hand again.

"Will you now let me have a look at that paw of yours?" Jack held it out to him wordlessly and Bozer took it, gently moving the bloody and bruised fingers. "I don't think you broke anything. I'll just clean it and wrap it up a bit." He got up and returned seconds later with the first-aid-kit that Jack kept in his bathroom.

"If you wanna talk, I'm here, you know?" Bozer said, while he was cleaning the busted knuckles with antiseptic.

"'Preciate that." Jack replied, wincing. "Ditto! And… Thanks! For everything!"

Bozer nodded sadly. He'd just finished his ministrations, when he jumped and fished his humming phone out of his pocket.

"Ri! What did you find out?" he asked in a trembling voice.

" _First things first: How's Jack?"_

"Oh, better, I guess… He yelled at me, won a fight against his furniture, lost one to his living room wall, refrained from killing me, yelled a bit more and now we're best buddies!"

Jack winced and Bozer gave him a lopsided smile.

" _Sorry I asked!"_ He could literally hear her eye-roll over the phone. _"You two up to coming over? I got something on that van…"_ Jack, who had listened with his ear close to the phone, jumped in.

"I thought you'd never ask! We're on the move!"

"Are we?" Bozer looked at him doubtfully, but Jack held his gaze, nodding slightly. Into the phone, he said: "We are!"

* * *

 _The cave_

Mac's hands groped around his dark prison, until they found what the two kidnappers had thrown down to him. It was a travelling bag with something soft inside. He opened the zipper and found a sleeping bag and a wrapped up blanket. When he shook out the latter, two objects fell out of it and clattered to the ground. The first one was a small plastic box he couldn't figure out the purpose of in the darkness. The second one had rolled away, when it came free, producing a metal-sound. He let his fingers travel over the ground, until they found it. It was a flashlight! He switched it on and took a look around.

In the faint glow of the little light bulb, he saw that there wasn't much to see. The space he was in was almost completely round, about 10 feet in diameter. The vertical walls were way too smooth to free climb.

Mac examined the supplies he'd been given. They had come in a nylon travelling bag: a rather ragged blanket of an undefined color, an old but warm sleeping bag (that should at least take care of the hypothermia for a while), the flashlight and the plastic box, which he now recognized as a small first-aid kit. He opened it in the hope of finding something to take care of his still seeping side, but the contents were meager: a couple of different sized Band-Aids, some outdated packages of sterile gaze, a triangular bandage and, last but not least, two butterfly bandages. It wasn't great, but better than nothing. He would've liked to trade the Band-Aids and the triangular bandage for some antiseptic, though.

Mac folded the blanket several times to use as a cushion, put his feet into the sleeping bag, pulled it up over his waist and sat down. He lifted his bloody shirt and craned his neck to take a look at the seeping cut. The stitches had reopened and the edges were slightly reddening with a beginning infection and were sensitive to the touch, but he decided he'd had worse and should be fine until he got out. He just wiped it clean a bit with some of the gaze, winced as he applied the two butterfly bandages and covered everything with some more gaze. He used the Band-Aids to keep it in place, finding a use for them after all. This makeshift treatment would have to do for now.

His wound taken care of, Mac crawled further into the sleeping bag, until only his face was free, and pulled his knees close to his chin in order to preserve as much body heat as possible. As he didn't know for how long the battery would hold, he'd switched off the flashlight and was sitting in complete, impenetrable darkness, the kind of darkness that seems to press upon your eyeballs. Mac could hardly tell if his eyelids were open or closed.

He had no way of telling for how long he'd been sitting there, but after a while of shivering in the curled-up position, he was finally feeling warmer. His watch was gone from his wrist. The kidnappers had presumably taken it off, when they'd tied up his hands. They'd said they would be back 'tonight' and by his estimation, it could easily be evening by now.

After some more minutes, Mac couldn't sit still any longer. There was a huge amount of nervous energy pent up inside him and he itched to work it off as much as possible in the confined and pitch-black space. He peeled himself out of the sleeping bag, piled everything he could stumble over on a heap in the middle of the 'room', put the switched-off flashlight into the back pocket of his jeans and started to walk a circle along the walls. His mind was swirling.

Had they already called Jack? Was his team on their way now? How was Jack, anyway? He was surely going ballistic by now! Mac recalled the events of this crazy day and went back to the cliff. He still couldn't believe how lucky he'd been! An inch further to the left and he'd have been a goner! Also if that van had appeared a minute earlier, when he'd still been inside the Jeep!

On the other hand... What were the odds that someone who'd just escaped death by an inch, just _happens_ to run across two mercs, who just _happen_ to be fleeing from a failed kidnapping and _happen_ to pick him off the street to put him into some dark hole?

 _Fat chance!_

His thoughts travelled back to his partner and he dearly hoped that Jack didn't think that he'd gone down with the Jeep! If he did, that ransom call would actually be a great relief for him! Mac chuckled a bit at the irony of it.

Nevertheless, he had to admit to himself, that the situation he was in was really starting to bother him. Sure, he had been kept prisoner in much worse places. He wasn't tortured here, for example, and he had every reason to believe that he'd be getting out of there soon, but the total darkness, the confined space, his inability to tell time and, of course, to get out by himself somehow, were all in all slowly getting to him. He simply had nothing to work with! There was no lock to pick, or door to blow out, or window to get open, or anything! He'd switched on the flashlight several times to examine the rocky walls in different places, but, no matter how frustrating it was to admit, his first impression proved true: There was no way anybody could climb up there without a rope!

After changing directions several times in order to avoid feeling giddy, he'd finally worked off enough energy to sit back down. Wrapped in the sleeping back again, he sat on the ground, leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, sighing deeply. He felt defeated, and he wasn't used to feeling defeated! However, he'd have no choice but to wait down here for somebody to come for him and pull him out! He pictured Jack finding him here, grinning and teasing the hell out of him. Mac smiled at the thought. He'd never hear the end of it, that some petty criminals, who just happened to come along (he was about 84 % sure that that was what they were), had managed what even Thornton hadn't been able to do last year: To find him a prison he couldn't 'macgyver' his way out of!

Mac felt the corners of his mouth twitch upwards in a fond smile, when he imagined the ball his partner would be having with that. That was a very comforting thought. He didn't fight the tiredness that suddenly overwhelmed him and allowed himself to drift off to sleep, convinced that, when he woke again, his team would be there and he'd finally be going home.

* * *

 _War Room, Phoenix Foundation, Los Angeles_

Riley was waiting impatiently for the rest of her colleagues to arrive, when the door opened and Bozer and Jack entered. Bozer was carrying the tinfoil-wrapped package with the sandwiches he'd prepared earlier at Jack's place and Jack was balancing a tray with coffee-to-go-cups for all of them with his uninjured hand. Matty followed suit. They handed around coffee and sandwiches, getting a relieved "You're life-savers, you know that?" from the hacker and looked at her expectantly. However, she eyed Jack's bandaged hand questioningly, but Bozer gave her a 'Don't ask!' glance and she complied, thankfully. Meanwhile, Jack had thrown a tentative look at Matty, but she just shook her head irritably. "I don't wanna know!" Riley took a sip of coffee and showed the front-shot of a very battered, dirty-white van with Californian license plates on the large screen for everyone to see.

"I believe that this is the van that came along the road when or right after the— accident— happened. It is registered to this man…" Riley bit her lower lip when she hit a key on her laptop to show the picture of a dark-blond man in his mid-thirties.

"Name's Robert Arlington. He was born and brought up in Chicago, where he dropped out of school at sixteen and fell off the grid for a couple of years. He's been occasionally reappearing all over the west coast lately, working for whoever pays him, mostly as a driver. He never stays in one place and one job for long." Jack stared at the man, his jaw working.

"I'd really like to ask him a couple of questions…" he mumbled under his breath.

"Do we know who he works for right now?" Matty asked.

"Well, a traffic cam on the I5 caught him driving around this guy." Riley showed the shot of the van again and scaled up the section that showed the person riding shotgun. "Alan Michael Higgs." A mugshot of a dark-haired, bearded and conspicuously broad-shouldered man replaced the picture taken by the surveillance cam.

"Higgs's currently working for this man…" The face of an older man, maybe pushing on sixty, with greyish hair, a hard face and piercing gray eyes behind black designer glasses appeared on the screen next to Higgs. "Bruce Christensen, known as ruthless loan shark, who always employs a couple of grunts who are happy to put the—uhm- necessary pressure on defaulting debtors."

"So Higgs does the dirty work for Christensen and Arlington drives him around?" Bozer summarized. "But how does all of this bring us any closer to finding Mac?"

Riley sighed. "I don't know yet, but Higgs and Arlington have been on that road at the relevant time frame. They've got to have seen something!"

"Go find them!" Matty ordered them all firmly, before she left the room.

* * *

 _Still in the War Room, two hours later..._

It was a subdued mood in the room. The coffee and the sandwiches were gone (Jack and Bozer had left most of the food to Riley, because they'd guessed correctly that she hadn't taken the time to eat anything all day and was running worryingly low on blood-sugar) and Riley was working in silence, which was occasionally disturbed by a frustrated sigh or grumble from her.

Jack was pacing the room like a caged animal, staring at the images on the big screen every few seconds, wiling them to reveal some clue or hint. Every now and then, he tried to sit down on one of the couches, but it looked a bit as if he was trying to sit on a cactus. As soon as he stopped moving and sat down, he had to get back to his feet and resume his pacing. Bozer was in a similar state and the two of them combined were slowly but surely driving Riley nuts!

"Keep it down, will you?" she eventually snapped at them. "Running a hole in the carpet isn't helping! Not to mention it's annoying as hell!"

The two male agents looked at each other. "Why don't we check in with forensics and see what they've found out so far?" Bozer suggested. Jack just nodded silently and they left the War Room.

* * *

 _Forensics Lab, Phoenix Foundation_

When Jack and Bozer entered the lab, Jill, who was studying something under a microscope, looked up from her work and greeted them. She rolled her chair over to the computer and entered some data, before she turned around to her two visitors.

"Please tell me you found something!" Jack pleaded.

"Well, we found a lot, but I'm afraid that so far, it doesn't get us any closer to Mac…" she broke off, studying her feet.

"Do you know what happened? Was it an accident, or did anybody—uuhm—arrange that to happen?"

"I can tell you, that we haven't found any hint to indicate anything else but an accident."

Jack frowned. "How?" he inquired. "What caused it?" The blond forensics expert walked over to a large white table, where a variety of soggy objects was spread out. Both men gulped, when they looked at the items, which they mostly recognized as Mac's property. It was everything the divers had brought ashore. Phone, wallet, travelling bag with a couple of days' worth of clothes and toiletries, jacket… Also all those fragments of the Jeep that were small enough to be brought to the lab. The chassis and other larger parts, like doors for instance, were stored in the basement, in a closed area of the garage.

"Take a look!" She waved them over to a corner of the table where a collection of very small shreds was displayed. Bozer and Jack looked at them blankly.

"Glass shards?" Bozer asked, puzzled. Jill nodded.

"Yeah! Glass shards and scraps of torn rubber, which definitely matches the Jeep's tires. One of them got busted shortly before the crash. By the looks of it, he hit a bottle lying around on the road, blew his left front tire, lost control over the car, broke through the guardrail and fell…" She trailed off, her throat tight, when she studied the men's crestfallen faces. "I'm really sorry! I wish I had better news!"

Jack resumed his pacing, his bandaged right hand absentmindedly rubbing the back of his neck, the left one balled into a tight fist. He looked everywhere but at the pitiful soaking mess on the table. The sight made his heart clench and his stomach regret the sandwich he'd eaten.

Several times, he opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He was desperate for information, he felt like he had thousands of questions, but he couldn't bring himself to ask a single one, because the answers he might get scared him shitless. What if he was presented solid proof that his partner, his brother, his _kid_ was gone for good? _As long as you don't open the lid, the cat isn't dead!_ He kept repeating that in his head. _On the other hand, it isn't_ alive _, either! So what good would not knowing do?_ That thought finally had him stop his frantic pacing and work up the courage to face Jill, who was calmly explaining some figure on the computer screen to Bozer.

"What about the Jeep?" Jack addressed her. "Can you tell for sure, if he was—I mean—in there, when it—... And if he was, why wasn't he in it, when the- uhm- wreck- was found?" Jill looked at him, chewing on her lip.

"Well, it's generally impossible to be 100 % sure of anything, after a car has crashed down a rocky cliff and been exposed to seawater for hours. To your second question... The seatbelt wasn't closed, so we think he opened it to get out before the fall, but…" She broke off, blinking rapidly, and went on in a low voice. "It would explain why he wasn't in the wreck anymore..."

"I just can't accept the worst without a – a body!" Jack's voice was hoarse and flat. "He must have gotten out in time! He just has to!" he insisted stubbornly.

Jill hesitated, searching for words. "I'm afraid he didn't have time. He would've had to get out through the passenger's side, as he hit the railing with the left… It must have happened within fractions of a second…"

Jack had his eyes squeezed shut at this, trying to block out the images his mind projected onto his retinas. It didn't work, though and he had to endure them for a minute. When it passed and he opened his eyes again, he found Bozer next to him, laying a steadying hand on his shoulder and speaking up.

"He's Mac! If anyone has a chance, it is him!" Jack appreciated Bozer's attempt to reassure him.

"All we can do is hope for the best! Only..." Jill caught herself, not wanting to send Jack into another round of inner cinema.

"What?" Jack and Bozer asked in unison.

"Well..." She looked troubled, uncertain if she should go on. Jack nodded at her. "If he's gotten himself out of the car and is alive, _where the hell is he now?_ Unless he's hiding from us for some mysterious reason, he must have turned up _somewhere_ by now!"

"Yeah, that's what Matty said, too! But what if he isn't alive? Where is he then?"

Jill answered hesitatingly and with a pained expression on her face. "His jacket had already drifted a mile into the open sea, when the crew of a trawler spotted it and fished it out. There is quite a current going on there. The area was searched immediately, but... nothing!"

Jack felt like the lump in his throat was choking him. Trying to draw breaths around it made him wheeze and tears welled up in his eyes, when he realized that his hope turned out to be nothing but him clutching at straws.

 _To be continued..._


	5. Chapter 5

**Hi readers,**

 **I can hardly believe that this is the fifth chapter already! Thank you so much for reading my story and especially for liking, following and reviewing! I love you all! ;-)**

 **To those who are hoping for more hurt Mac... Well, he's gonna be in pretty bad shape very soon and in serious need of some rescuing. I hope you're not too disappointed of nobody hurting him on purpose, but that just wasn't where I wanted to go with this story.**

 **Unlike the characters and everything else you might recognize, all mistakes are mine!**

* * *

Summary:

A terrible accident – a Jeep, smashed almost beyond recognition – not the slightest trace of a certain blond agent… Eventually, the team have to face the fact that they might have lost their friend forever.

* * *

 **BETWEEN HOPE AND DESPAIR**

Chapter 5

 _War Room_

When Matty entered the War Room the next morning, she was greeted by a somewhat adorable sight, which would have triggered an entire series of sarcastic remarks and teasing on her part, if the reason hadn't been so sad. Three of her top agents were scattered over the brown leather furniture, fast asleep. Riley lay with her face on the smooth surface of the table, messy black hair spread out widely, her laptop open in front of her; Bozer was curled up into a ball in an armchair and Jack lay sprawled on his back on a couch, head resting on the armrest, left arm and leg hanging off the couch, snoring slightly. The older man twitched occasionally in his sleep, emotions ghosting over his face. Matty sighed. She hated to have to wake them, as they'd obviously worked themselves into total exhaustion. She cleared her throat loudly and the three instantaneously jumped into wakefulness.

"Good morning!" she greeted them dryly. "Missed your bus home last night?"

"Morning, Matty!" the three of them replied drowsily. Riley was massaging strained muscles in her neck; Bozer groggily rubbed sleep out of his eyes and Jack stretched his tall, muscular frame. Matty noticed the dull, empty, defeated expression on his red-eyed face.

"What have you found out about the whereabouts of Arlington and Higgs?" She addressed the group in general. Riley spoke up.

"Nothing!" Her tone lay somewhere between astonishment and frustration. "They seem to have vanished into thin air!" The computer specialist seemed to take the lack of any useful information personally. "Our traffic cam shot from yesterday is the last time they turned up anywhere! My little program will alert me as soon as they turn up in front of a camera or are mentioned anywhere I have access to."

Jack hadn't moved at all, since he'd slumped back onto the couch after stretching. He barely registered what was going on around him. The facts he'd learned the night before filled his insides and weighed him down like lead. He was still torn between the hope for a miracle and total devastation, but he felt the former part getting weaker and weaker. Mac was gone for more than 24 hours now, without any hint that pointed to anything but the worst. Sure, he could fabricate scenarios with positive outcomes, but each was becoming more far fetched than the last. All those scenarios started to crumble around him, the broken pieces crushing down onto him, sharp edges cutting deep into his flesh, his heart, his very soul. The mere thought of his life without Mac in it was worse than anything he'd ever endured; worse than all the inconceivably horrible stuff he'd seen during his service with the Army or Delta, worse than every torture that was ever done to him and he couldn't imagine that it could have hurt any more if Mac had been his biological son. He was so much more to him! He was family in every way that mattered and the idea of losing the boy left him with a gaping, freely bleeding gash where his heart used to be.

How was he supposed to live from now on? He had honestly no idea. His world had ended. His most important _purpose_ was gone! Worst of all: It was completely pointless! It was a friggin' stupid _accident_! Jack thought that, maybe, eventually, he might be able to deal with the loss, if his partner had sacrificed himself on some planet-saving mission or something, but definitely not with the fact that some old bottle littering the street had been his literal downfall. What a terrible waste! Add the fact that his body may never be found and in that case he wouldn't even get the chance to to say goodbye and lay his kid to rest and he almost wished he could die as well, right there, where he sat.

Jack felt a warm and soft hand on his arm. When he opened his burning eyes, Riley was sitting next to him, fresh tears on her face.

"You don't have to go through this alone, Jack, you know that, don't you?" she told him in a low voice that sounded as if it would break if she tried to speak more loudly. "We're all his friends and we're all here."

Jack didn't reply. He just closed his eyes again and sighed deeply. Bozer sat down on the armrest on his other side. "You wanna go home? I'll drop you off, if you like." Jack could only shake his still throbbing head. He was still unable to speak. He didn't know what he wanted and he couldn't care less. No, of course, he knew, but what he really wanted was gone for good. Just staying here on this comfortable couch and never moving again felt like as good a plan as any other. He heard Matty's small feet approach him, cracked one eye open and squinted at her. She addressed the three friends with a very grave face.

"I'm afraid I've got bad news for you!"

Jack just squeezed his eyes shut again; Riley buried her face in her hands and Bozer hung his head sadly. All three tried to brace themselves.

"Has he been—I mean—", Bozer started to ask but couldn't bring himself to finish.

"No, not yet." Matty replied. "And unfortunately, the official search will be terminated shortly. The chances of finding him alive are close to zero by now."

Jack suddenly jerked and jumped to his feet as if burned by a hot iron.

"No!" he yelled. "They can't stop just like that! 'Close to zero' isn't nothing! I- I know the prospect's not great, but—"

His voice quivered and he gulped in a couple of breaths, before he went on in a more desperate, smaller voice. "We can't just give up on him!" Bozer and Riley looked horrorstruck.

" _We_ are not giving up, but the authorities have to cease a search if it is hopeless. However, even Phoenix has to consider how far aa search has a chance of success. Not even we can use infinite resources without proof of life, or at least a resilient indication that it is more than a body search."

"Do you mean to tell me that we just declare Mac dead and that's it? Because keeping up the search is a _waste of resources_?! Like he _isn't worth it_?!" Jack yelled the last part.

"Dalton!" Matty addressed him firmly. "I didn't say that and I certainly didn't _mean_ it!"

"But that's what it comes down to in the end, isn't it?" Jack interrupted her in a flat, defeated voice. His face suddenly looked as if he'd aged fifteen years within the last two days. Dark circles underlined his eyes and deep lines of worry and grief had appeared all over his pale face. He looked grey and worn-out. Matty let the interruption slide.

"We're definitely in no hurry to declare him dead. He's officially missing, if that makes you feel any better."

"Barely…" Jack mumbled. Matty went on.

"What will be stopped is the official search by Coast Guard and Police. Phoenix, however, will of course investigate further! We just have to keep in mind that we might not be successful. We can't certainly keep combing through endless square-miles of open sea looking for a—body!" She purposefully left the possibility unsaid, that there might not even be anything left to find, considering the existence of sharks and other predatory fish in those waters. She didn't need to; her three employees were very much aware of that, of course.

The rational, trained part of Jack's mind knew she was right, but there was the other part, which was clinging to hope and point-blank refusing to acknowledge the truth. It was his best friend they were talking about for crying out loud, a family member, who had been a living, breathing person the last time he'd seen him! Now it was officially a search for a _body_! He sunk back onto the couch between Riley and Bozer, feeling drained. He heard Riley sniffle next to him and blinked at her. Tears were running down her face freely and she made no attempt to stop or hide them. Jack reached out and pulled her into his strong arms. She leaned into him gratefully.

Matty watched the remaining members of her best team closely. They were not handling the situation well, but that was to be expected. She was seriously worried about all of them. The completely unanticipated, out-of-the-blue loss of one of their own had struck them hard, and she didn't think that the full force of the blow had even reached them yet. They were devastated, yes, but partly still hoping for a miracle. Damn, even she herself halfway expected MacGyver to wondrously turn up somewhere, alive and well. That genius boy had beaten the odds so often and escaped hopeless situations, that she found it hard to believe that this time would be any different. Sure, she hadn't trusted his improvisations on missions at first and she'd warned him in his first employee evaluation with her about his luck running out one day. However, over the course of time she had learned to trust this young man and his unconventional ways of thinking. He knew what he was doing, most of the time, and although he operated a lot on faith, he had a profound knowledge of a wide variety of scientific concepts, was an extremely fast thinker and saw his surroundings in a way maybe nobody else did. He found solutions that nobody else would see and she couldn't even dare a rough estimate, how many lives that had saved since he'd joined the Army at the age of nineteen.

The problem was that she had no idea, how any of that could possibly have helped him to get himself out of that Jeep alive. She had had a long talk with Forensics this morning already and gotten their finished report. There were parts missing due to the nearly total destruction of the accident vehicle, but according to the results they gathered, one of the Jeeps front tires had hit a glass bottle on the road, blown out, the car had skidded into the guardrail, flattened it and fallen down the cliff. Most likely, it had taken the young agent along.

Matty wouldn't have put it past MacGyver to find a way out of the skidding car in time, but whatever might have happened didn't explain where he was now, if he was, indeed, alive. There was still that mysterious van, though, which seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth since the last camera shot of them Riley had dug up. It had passed the spot moments after Mac and Matty was almost a 100 % certain that those two men, Arlington and Higgs, had seen something. She itched to get her hands on them to ask them, even if it would maybe just confirm what all the evidence pointed at. It might at least help them all to reach some level of closure.

Matty took in the scene that played out in front of her on the couch. Jack had a silently crying Riley in a very protective embrace. She had her face buried in the t-shirt on his shoulder and was clutching at the shirt with both hands. The older man held her form in his arms, his right hand absentmindedly rubbing circles on her back, his left tangled into her black hair. His chin rested lightly on the top of her head and he was gently rocking her back and forth, trying to give her the comfort he craved for so badly himself. His face showed a mixture of pain, grief, hope, despair, caring for the kid in his arms and – _love_. He struggled for composure – and succeeded only partially. Matty's heart almost shattered into a thousand pieces watching them.

Bozer was sitting next to them with a stony expression on his face. He still looked too shell-shocked to have truly taken in the full extent of the disaster. He didn't exactly lean onto the pair next to him, but he, too, seemed to yearn for comfort through physical contact. Jack, devastated as he was, still gave it for both of them just by being there. No matter what, he would always care for his family.

Matty sighed. She'd soon need her War Room back.

* * *

 _The cave_

When MacGyver woke up, the first thing he felt was pain. About every muscle in his neck, shoulders and back was strained to breaking point. His head thudded with every heartbeat, his throat was completely dried-up, his ribs felt like one sole, gigantic bruise and his side – Oh god, that hurt! And he was cold!

He opened his burning and itching eyes and found himself still in complete, impenetrable darkness. He was lying curled up into a ball on his side, on his injured side of all things. He was wrapped in the sleeping bag, but nevertheless, the cold hard ground he was lying on constantly drained him of body heat. He groaned. At least he tried to, but his throat was so dry that only a hoarse raspy sound came out. It immediately triggered a bout of coughing. _Ouch!_

He gingerly felt for the wound and came upon a great amount of wetness, which had soaked through the makeshift bandage, his shirt _and_ the sleeping bag. The area around the cut was hot and swollen, and although he couldn't see it in the dark, he was sure it had turned an angry shade of red. _Infection! Great!_

Despite the pain that exploded in his side with even the slightest jostling, he pushed himself up to a sitting position and peeled his upper body out of the sleeping bag. His head spun even from the slight movement. The dizziness in the darkness made him feel nauseous and he groped for the flashlight and switched it on. Had the glow always been this dim? _Batteries are probably almost dead!_ Mac examined his wound as good as he could and found the sticky wetness not to be blood, but a yellowish liquid, whose foul smell made him gag. The light flickered and died, when the batteries gave out. _Terrific!_ He took out the batteries and shoved them into his jeans pocket to warm them up. With a little luck, that would grant him some more minutes of light later.

Alone in the dark hole, he started to shudder violently. He was freezing so bad! His prison felt more and more like a grave. He got to his feet to walk around the space, just to check that the walls were still where they belonged. They felt like they were closing in on him to slowly crush him to death. He felt waves of panic rush through him, forcing him to pace more. They took turns with bouts of total exhaustion that had him simply collapsing to the floor. Every time that happened, he could do nothing but lay there for periods between a few minutes and half an hour, which he needed to gather enough strength to get up again.

That way, a couple of hours passed, and he was still alone. Nobody had come for him, neither the kidnappers, nor Jack, nor anybody else! What were they all playing at? What the hell was going on? Why was nobody coming? Were his two 'hosts' just going to leave him there to die? But why? If they'd wanted to kill him, why had they bothered with bringing him here and even provide him with supplies? No, that didn't make sense! He strongly suspected that, somehow, things hadn't gone as planned for them. Had they called Jack already? How long would it take his partner to get to him? He dearly hoped that they had, in fact, made contact, because if not, he wasn't entirely sure that his friends had any chance of finding him in this place. To top it off, they'd have to find him _soon_!

 _Now would be a great time for you to show up, partner,_ he thought, almost pleadingly.

He was naturally very aware, what the symptoms he was experiencing, aside from the effects of the infection, meant. He recognized headache, dizziness and dry mucosa as signs of dehydration. He'd had his fair share of experience with that during his time in the desert with the army and knew what it felt like, after all.

The thirst was rapidly getting tantalizing. He hadn't had anything to drink since he'd left his house before the accident the day before. He estimated that it must have been much more than 24 hours ago. His side throbbed insistently. He very lightly laid two fingers onto the wound and it exploded into a burning pain that had him flinch away even from his own touch. The infection had clearly gotten worse. Not good!

He was shivering from a bone-chilling cold while his skin felt like it was burning, which told him that he was already running a fever. That, in combination with the total absence of drinking water, was bad! Although the low temperature in the cave was working in his favor, the fever most definitely wasn't. It would considerably shorten the time he had until his body gave out on him and he'd simply succumb to dehydration in the end. What a terrible way to go! He almost wished it had been the cliff…

If he didn't get out of there fast, he'd have to face that fate within the next day. Maybe two, if he was lucky. _If you can call that 'lucky'_ …

A fresh wave of panic gripped him and forced him to his feet and into new rounds of pacing, despite the weakness he was experiencing. He panted from the exertion of his frantic stumbling. His head spun and in the complete darkness, he could hardly tell up from down. He staggered and fell to his knees, heavily leaning against the wall to keep himself from falling over and hardly noticing that he hit his head against the rock. Mac desperately tried to get his breathing under control and, after a few minutes, he finally managed to calm down enough to even it out a bit. Problem was that adrenaline from the panic attack had been the only thing that had kept him on his feet until now. As it receded along with the panic, all strength left his shaking body and he just slid down the wall and lay crumpled on the ground, finally losing his fight to stay conscious.

* * *

 _Mac's and Bozer's place, late afternoon the same day_

Jack, Riley and Bozer had finally left the War Room to Matty. Neither of them felt like being alone. Okay, Jack would have at first, but the other two insisted that he joined them. They all needed company right now. The Texan had given in in the end, claiming that he had to repay Bozer for taking care of him the day before and couldn't possibly, under any circumstances let the young man face returning to an empty house by himself. Mac's childhood friend was much more scared of that than he cared to admit. And you couldn't say the others were exactly looking forward to it, either.

They'd just arrived in front of the house in Bozer's car and all three approached the front porch very reluctantly. With trembling fingers, Bozer fumbled clumsily for the key. He unlocked the door and pushed it open an inch, but then he took a step backwards and gestured at Jack and Riley.

"I can't go in there!" he stated with a croaky voice and looked away in a feeble attempt to hide that he was crying.

"You live here, Boze! This is _your_ place!" Riley pointed out.

"Mac and I live here, as in _WE_!"

"Let's go, before I chicken out, too!" Jack interjected, took a steadying breath and pushed the door all the way open. He closed his eyes for a second and then, he entered.

Jack had no idea, what he'd been expecting, but he was taken aback by the sight that met his eyes. Everything he could see in the house looked absolutely _normal_. Like the inhabitants of the place had just left and would be back any minute. Well, one of them was; the other one, though...

Riley end Bozer followed him inside and closed the door. All of them found the place to look strangely unchanged. Well, why shouldn't it be? Nothing terrible had happened in here, after all. The trio made their way to the living room. Mac's motorcycle was propped up there, waiting for its owner to continue the repairs. Jack felt a great lump rise in his throat and turned away from it, paced a couple of lengths across the room and finally let himself sink onto the couch. He let his fingertips wander over the surface, taking in its familiar feeling. He had spent hours and hours on this couch, usually having a good time, watching movies, eating popcorn or enjoying Bozer's exceptionally good cooking and just hanging out with his friends.

From now on, one of them would be missing.

Jack just sat there, staring at nothing and still not really believing it.

Meanwhile, Bozer had busied himself in the kitchen (The best way to get his head straight again was cooking up something delicious – the more complicated, the better!) and Riley, too, was doing, what she was best at. She'd put up her laptop on the table and dialed into the the Phoenix network, so she would get an alarm as soon as anything turned up.

Jack dearly wished he could do something nearly as useful, but he couldn't, and that made it even ten times worse for him. The things, which he was best at, didn't help here at all. He couldn't personally search an ocean. There was no rescue mission he could lead, no tactical problems to solve, no bad guys to hunt down... Hell, by now he'd even have been happy to go out there on some final revenge campaign, but on whom? His partner had fallen victim to a freak _accident_ , and unless he wanted to hunt down the person who left that bottle lying on the road, there was nobody he could put the blame on. A small part of him hoped, that, when they found the two guys in that van, someone would put him in restraints to keep him from ripping them limb from limb, as he had nowhere else to channel his anger. But they hadn't caused the accident. However, a _much_ bigger part yearned to do exactly that, for passing by an accident site without trying to help or at least calling emergency. A early alert could easily have made the difference between life and death or, at least, finding his partner's body or not.

He was abruptly pulled out of that headspace by an insistent beeping sound from Riley's rig. The three agents jumped and Riley immediately opened a phone connection to Matty at Phoenix and put it on speaker, so they could all listen in.

"What's up?" their boss asked without any further ado.

"It's my surveillance program." Riley explained. "It has found something!" she leaned forward and pulled the laptop onto her lap. " _Oh no_!" Her face fell.

"What is it? What have you found? Is it about Mac?" Matty asked, an uncharacteristic strain in her voice.

"No. It's Arlington and Higgs. They were found. Dead. Murdered!"

A threefold "WHAT?" sounded back at her. Even Jack had snapped out of his stupor. The hacker turned her computer around, so that Jack and Bozer, who had magically come over from the kitchen in exactly the right moment, could see it. Matty had the same images on her screen, of course.

"A ranger reported to police that he's found their van crashed against a tree today. They were both dead, but not from the crash. They were shot!"

 _To be continued..._


	6. Chapter 6

**Hi readers,**

 **Due to a newly established holiday in my federal state (No, it's not Halloween, it just shares the date), I'm enjoying a day off work today aaaand I've been busy with something much more enjoyable than work: I've finished the 6** **th** **chapter! :-) Enjoy!**

 **Chapter warning:**

 **I think I'm supposed to put a warning for gross content on this one. Mac's gonna use theonly source of – uuhm - liquid available to him… If you get my drift. I'll clearly mark the part, so if you prefer to skip that, you'll find it more easily.**

 **Happy Halloween to everyone who celebrates!**

 **Unlike the characters and everything else you might recognize, all mistakes are mine!**

* * *

Summary:

A terrible accident – a Jeep, smashed almost beyond recognition – not the slightest trace of a certain blond agent… Eventually, the team have to face the fact that they might have lost their friend forever.

* * *

 **BETWEEN HOPE AND DESPAIR**

Chapter 6

 _Mac's and Bozer's living room_

"Shot?" Matty frowned at the police report. There weren't many details yet, as the bodies had only just been discovered, but police had a positive ID on them.

Bozer had taken a few steps closer to the screen and stared at it in disbelief. "Now we'll never find out what really happened!"

"I know it wouldn't have helped Mac, but I'd have really liked to hear their story!" Riley mumbled sadly.

"Me too!" Jack growled from the background. He sat a little straighter and stared at the image of the shorthand report on the laptop's screen.

"I'm sorry!" Matty's sympathetic tone and demeanor left no doubt at all, that she meant it.

After the line had been disconnected, she allowed herself a little time for some private mourning.

* * *

 _The cave, cold and dark as ever_

Mac was breathing through waves of pain from his burning side and his throbbing head. Even lying down, he felt dizzy. The ground swayed and rolled underneath him like a ship's deck in a heavy storm. If he hadn't already been lying on the ground, he would have fallen over. The inflamed wound in his side sent waves of scorching heat through his system, taking turns with icy cold that made his teeth chatter.

He was just experiencing a bout of freezing, when he finally gathered enough strength to crawl over to his sleeping bag on all fours. His entire body was trembling and shaking. Clumsily, he maneuvered himself into the insulating refuge to ward off the bone-chilling cold, but had to rip it off himself only ten minutes later, because he was hit by another heat wave that doused him in sweat all over. The heavy sweating wasted a lot of precious water and the frequent changes from burning up to freezing and back quickly drained his liquid-deprived and exhausted body from even more energy.

The entire area from his armpit down to his hip was on fire. To fight off the infection, his body urgently needed liquids. And some good antibiotics couldn't hurt... Thinking was already much harder to do and went slower. His head felt like it was about to explode, whenever he tried to force it to string two coherent thoughts together. Mac knew that he didn't have much time, before the confusion and disorientation caused by the lack of water would render him completely incapacitated. Suddenly he realized in horror that he felt a strong temptation to just surrender to his fate, which meant to let himself being taken by first growing disorientation, then unconsciousness and eventually, inevitably, death. It would, at least, mean that the pain would end soon. That didn't sound so bad anymore. He didn't wish to die, but sweet oblivion was luring, beckoning him to give in.

However, there was that other voice inside his head, insistent, annoying. That one told him never to give up, to fight, to survive as long as humanely possible, in order to give Jack, or whoever might be coming for him, as much time as possible to find him alive. The voice reminded him constantly that he couldn't give up, because that wasn't in his nature. Now that he thought about it, he found that that voice sounded an awful lot like Jack's. _Whenever you're ready, Big Guy… I could use some rescuing down here…_

Jack's voice was louder and clearer now. It was strong enough to allow Mac to tune out that other, unfamiliar, voice that was trying to lure him into capitulation. Naturally, he knew that neither voice was really there, but who cared, really? Jack's voice was a nice thing to hang on to and it helped him to focus on what he had to do to buy himself some more time. His head was relatiively clear at the moment and he knew he had to act now – or never. He cringed in disgust.

 _ ***** Gross content ahead… Proceed at your own risk... *****_

Sometime the day before, when he was still convinced that his stay in this – uhm – 'accommodation' would be short, he'd had to take care of a certain business. In the absence of anything he could misuse as a chamber pot, he'd grudgingly chosen a niche in the wall and declared the spot his makeshift toilet.

By now, he seriously had to reconsider his resources. Every fiber in his body screamed at him not to resort to that final supply of liquid, the one that had gathered inside his bladder, which was now signaling him not to be full, but it wanted to be emptied. But Jack's voice was begging him, pleading with him to hang on just a little longer, and if Mac was honest with himself, he knew that he was too freakin' _stubborn_ to just give up. Disgust wouldn't keep him from trying to give his partner that additional time, if he had the chance!

His mind made up, he dug the warmed up batteries out of his pocket and inserted them back into the flashlight. He needed to see was he was doing, although he would have preferred not to. He switched it on with baited breath, letting the air out in a relieved sigh, when the device emitted a dim glow. He had to blink a couple of times to clear his vision. His eyes weren't used to working anymore. A part of his mind wondered if this would be the last light he'd ever see in his life, but he shut that part up quickly. There was no time for that kind of pointless musing. Revolted but determined, he emptied the last useless items out of the plastic first-aid-kit-box. It was the only available thing that could contain water… Or other liquids.

After relieving himself into the container, he dared a look at the liquid. It was the darkest shade of yellow, a clear sign for water deprivation, and it smelled strongly. _UURGH!_ Before he could change his mind, Mac put the container to his reluctantly parting lips, used the other hand to close his nose in order to ease up the taste a bit and took a mouthful. His face screwed up, he swallowed it and pure stubbornness kept it down. The taste was as repellent as anyone could expect, but at the same time, the warm liquid running down his throat felt like the elixir of life! As soon as he was certain that he wouldn't puke the first gulp right back up, he took another one. He put down the box with the rest of the liquid (roughly another two swallows) to give his body a break to process what he'd just had to force upon it.

The light died again and now, Mac was condemned to total darkness once more, probably without the possibility to negotiate any more light out of those batteries, as they were bound to be completely dead now.

After approximately half an hour, he took the rest of the 'drink', which, repugnant as it was, managed to make him feel a little better, at least for a while. He had considered saving it for later, but didn't want to risk accidentally spilling it in the dark. His life could depend on it, after all.

 _ ***** It's safe to read on from here… *****_

 _All right, partner, I did what I could to give you as much time as possible. It's up to you now…_

* * *

 _Next morning at Bozer's_

Mac had been gone for more than two full days now. After the three friends had each spent the night at their own respective places, they were joining Bozer again. None of them had gotten much restful sleep. They'd finished their breakfast, which consisted of the famous, specially designed, Bozer-style waffles and lots and lots of coffee. The kitchen was spotlessly clean again (They'd take anything to keep their hands busy). Their stomachs full, they were now gathered in the living room again, mostly in subdued silence. Nobody felt much like talking anymore. They'd talked a lot last night and throughout breakfast, though. For one thing, they'd agreed that they were in no hurry to start using past-tense when they were referring to Mac. It would eventually, inevitably happen, but they weren't intending to rush it.

Now, they were all trapped within their own heads, each of them trying to figure out, how on earth they were supposed to deal with the loss they'd suffered. Bozer played absentmindedly with the dishtowel that he'd been carrying around since they'd finished cleaning up the kitchen. There were already loose threads coming off the fabric. Jack wrung his empty hands, getting to his feet to pace every few minutes, only to sink back onto the couch, his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes. The concussion he'd recently sustained still left him with a persisting headache, which felt much worse whenever he didn't have anything to do to distract him from it. Riley checked something on her laptop in frequent intervals, more to keep her hands busy, than because she was working on anything right now. She was sitting with folded legs, laptop propped up on her lap and subconsciously scrolling through tons of data, which her spy program was still collecting. She just hadn't bothered to stop it yet. Her eyes scanned the information out of habit, but her mind wandered elsewhere. Why shouldn't it?

Since Matty had released them from active duty until further notice, none of them had anything to do, now that it was clear that their last trace had gone cold. Their colleague and friend wasn't coming back, plain and simple! The brutal and irrevocable truth had laid itself upon the grieving trio like some poisonous vapor. While it seemed to numb and weigh down the two younger agents, it had quite the opposite effect on Jack. He was growing more and more agitated. He wasn't able to sit still anymore and his pacing became more frantic by the minute.

Jack was still having nightmares, whenever he dozed off to sleep, but they had changed lately. At first, he repeatedly had to watch Mac die a wide variety of violent deaths, himself always being too late or otherwise unable to save him. As if that hadn't been disturbing enough, the dreams had changed since last night: Now, he always saw Mac trapped, alone, in different frightening and/or life-threatening situations, unable to get out by himself and always desperately, pleadingly crying out for Jack to come and save him. Jack always woke up, before he could do anything, the distraught cries ringing in his ears for hours after waking. Those altered dreams unsettled him even more, than those he'd had before.

 _Where are you? Please, hang on, pal, just a little longer!_

He had no clue what made him plead with his deceased partner. It was entirely pointless, even childish. A detached part of his mind wondered, if he was just still in denial, but there was this feeling in the pit of his stomach that kept him restless, as if he was missing something crucial. As if he was letting his friend down. He'd sworn never ever to abandon the kid many years back in that hellhole of a war zone. Being doomed to inactivity had him pacing the room like a caged mother bear who'd been separated from her cubs. And that was exactly what he felt like.

"UUUUHHMM? What the—"

The two men turned around to the hacker, who had gotten rigid and was gaping at her screen with her eyes first blown wide and now narrowed to slits, deep creases on her forehead. She had definitely lost several shades of color.

"What?" "What is it?" they asked her urgently.

"This isn't even possible! What the _hell_ is going on here?" Riley had found her voice, but stared at her computer in utter disbelief. "Jack, you might wanna have a look at- _this_ …" She waved the older man over and reestablished the line to Matty. Their boss answered immediately and Jack came over in two large strides to look at the screen.

"Riley? What's wrong?" the short woman asked, puzzled.

"I can't believe it!" Riley was flabbergasted. "Matty, you'll never guess what they've found on Higgs' body!"

"I really don't feel like attending a quiz, so spit it out!"

Riley hit a key and the photograph of a creased sheet of paper appeared full-screen. Four pairs of eyes stared at it, their owners trying hard to take in the scribbled numbers written on it. Everyone recognized the phone number and, as if that by itself had not been mystifying enough, that handwriting was so familiar that they'd identify it anywhere.

Jack bent down to bring his face closer to the screen and blankly stared at his own phone number on the plain white surface, not believing what he was seeing. That handwriting… It was usually a lot tidier than this, as if the hand that had scribbled down those numbers had been shaking, but that hand belonged, without even the slightest doubt, to MacGyver! But that couldn't be… Or could it? There it was, right in front of his eyes! It didn't make any sense… Unless...

"Is this real?" Jack asked Riley in a trembling voice. She nodded, still in shock.

"It sure looks like it. This piece of paper was among the things the police found in Higgs' pockets. It's in the case file on the police server. I can't find anything to indicate a fake."

The three agents still stared at the screen as if it had just sprouted wings. None of them would admit it, but they all felt their hopes secretly rise up. If the obvious accident theory was true, how on earth did that little rogue come by a piece of paper where Mac had written down Jack's phone number? The whole thing stank to heaven!

Matty was watching the exchange in silence from her end of the line. She frowned as her gears were turning.

"All right, guys!" She had come to a conclusion. "I know you're officially off duty until further notice, but I'd like to reinstate you for one task, if you're ready for it."

"What do you want us to do?" Jack inquired.

"I want to have a little chat with that boss of theirs. And I want you to go get him. _Alive_!" She put particular emphasis on the last word.

The answer came without hesitation and in perfect unison out of three mouths.

"I'm in!"

* * *

 _A nondescript apartment building in a living quarter in L.A._

 _More on the seedy side_

 _A great place for shady businessmen – and undercover agents – to blend in_

Jack and Bozer took their positions on both sides of the door labeled 'B. Christensen, Financial Services'. Riley added the last finishing touches to her outfit. Bozer had fitted her with a perfect fresh bruise around her left eye, which promised to turn black shortly – if it had been real. A little fake blood on her upper lip that had artfully leaked down to her chin, disheveled hair and some missing buttons combined with a long tear in her blouse, which allowed quite some insight, completed her disguise. Jack winced. It hurt him to see her like that, even though he knew that it was just masquerade. She breathed deeply and approached the door.

"Help me, please!" She screamed at the top of her voice, while she repeatedly pushed the bell knob. _"HEEELP!"_ She pounded at the door frantically. "My ex-boyfriend, he's gonna kill me! Please! Open up!" She pleaded hysterically, and pounded and rang the bell some more. Jack and Bozer threw each other looks and grinned. Riley was really into the role of the damsel in distress. She took a moment to roll her eyes at them, before she resumed her screaming and hammering.

When the door jerked open and a tall and thin older man appeared in the frame, she immediately threw herself into his arms. He made a face and tried to push her away, but she held on, pretending to cry into the front of his beige suit.

"Will you stop that? What's all that uproar about? _Get. Off. Me!_ " He snarled at her.

Riley hiccuped the perfect imitation of a sob, let go of the grey-haired, bespectacled man and retreated two steps into the hallway. The man gazed down his front and his face turned a deep shade of red, when he discovered the 'bloodstains' on his tailored and clearly very expensive jacket.

"You _bitch_! You ruined my suit! You'll pay for that!" He spat and took two large steps into the hallway. Riley dodged him easily. That was the moment for Bozer to spring into action. He slammed the door shut behind the man, causing him to reel around.

"Hi!" Bozer greeted him with a wide grin and a wave of his hand. Before the furious loan shark even realized that there was a third person in the corridor, Jack hit him in the back of the head with one practiced, well-placed fist. He dropped like a rock.

"See? Nobody turns my girl down when she begs for help!" Jack told him and quickly and expertly looked him over, but he already knew, that the man was just out cold. He and Bozer each placed one of his arms over their shoulders and manhandled their captive down the corridor and into the elevator.

They left the cabin on the ground floor and dragged the unconscious man towards the parked Phoenix van, heaving him inside and driving off. It spoke volumes of the kind of neighborhood that resided there, that nobody even glanced twice at the highly suspicious group. The three agents were relieved to be on their way back to Phoenix. On the other hand, they had extracted criminals from much worse places all over the world...

Somewhere along the way, Christensen came around. He was securely bound and gagged and Jack was sitting opposite him, lasciviously playing with his gun and apparently paying the prisoner no attention. As they (well, Jack, to be precise) had strict order to leave any interrogating to Matty, they interacted with their prisoner as little as possible.

Matty took losing an agent _very_ personally, even if it didn't happen on a mission. Whatever this man knew about the whereabouts of MacGyver, she'd get it out of him. Jack had downright begged to be the one to do the honor, just to be able to work off a little stress, but Matty had refused for good reason. They weren't entirely sure that he knew anything and if not, she'd have to do a lot of unnecessary explaining and glossing over, if Jack had punched the guy into next week. Taking him had felt good, even though Jack was secretly a little disappointed that it had been so easy and that that one well-measured punch had been the only one he'd needed.

Back at Phoenix, they dutifully delivered their package to one of the interrogation rooms, where Matty ordered them out and shut the door in Jack's face. He grumbled something incomprehensible while walking up and down the corridor, until Bozer and Riley grabbed him by the arms and guided him towards the elevators. Jack protested vehemently.

"Mac doesn't have that kind of time! We've got to find him soon, we need to know where to look!"

Bozer took on a somewhat hopeful expression, while Riley tried not to get her hopes up too soon.

"Do you really believe that Mac might still be alive someplace?" He asked.

"With my number written by him in their pocket? Yeah!" Jack stated simply. "And they were working for that guy down there. I don't have the tiniest clue what a dodgy loan shark like Christensen would want with Mac or my phone number, but if Matty doesn't find out, I will!"

"Jack, if Matty doesn't find out, there is nothing to find!" Riley pointed out. "Why don't we do something useful instead and talk to the Forensics people? Matty has had all the stuff that was found on the bodies and inside the van brought over there. She also sent a tech to take samples from the van. If Mac has been in there, they're gonna find traces, no matter how small they might be." Jack and Bozer looked at her appreciatively.

"Let's go!"

* * *

 _Forensics Lab, Phoenix Foundation_

Back in the lab, they were once again greeted by Jill.

"Good you came! I was just about to call you."

"What have you found out?" Bozer asked.

"First of all, we've run that sheet of paper through every test and examination method known to mankind. It's safe to assume that it is genuine. It even has Mac's fingerprints all over it."

The trio just looked at her blankly, trying to process what that might mean.

"There's more!" The young blond tech went on. "The samples taken from the van prove that Mac's been inside. We were hoping for some hairs. There were none, but there was some blood, which we positively identified as Mac's!"

Jack felt as if he'd just touched a live wire. _God! Could that mean...?_ He didn't dare yet to take that thought any further, but on the other hand he couldn't help getting his hopes up, either! He forced himself to ask: "You said blood? How much?"

"Just smears on the floor in the back. Not nearly enough to assume a mortal wound."

"So he _has_ gotten himself out of the Jeep, before it went down! I _knew_ it! And those two assholes grabbed him for some reason!" Jack mumbled more to himself than to the others in the room, thinking hard. "But why? What did they want with him? Too bad they're already dead! I woulda loved to punch it outta them before killing them!"

Jill spoke up again. "We also reevaluated the accident scene after the new information came in. Everything looked like the Jeep broke through the guardrail and went straight down, but it is just as well possible, that it flattened the railing and stayed balanced on the rim at first."

Now all her three visitors looked a lot more hopeful. Riley had her eyes closed and was taking slow and deep breaths to keep her emotions in check. She didn't want to be relieved yet. There was a chance, but the new set of circumstances didn't necessarily mean, that they'd find Mac alive. Bozer, on the other hand, grinned all over his face. He had gained a full sack of new hope. And Jack...

"Matty better gets a move on that Christiansen!"

"Christensen." Riley corrected automatically.

"Whatever!"

"Why did the Jeep fall down later, then?" Bozer inquired.

"Well, the van left skidding marks in the gravel, too. They tried to take the curve with to much speed and lost traction for a moment. Until this morning, we assumed that the Jeep had already been gone by that time, but the van has a fresh dent in the left rear part, which could easily have been caused by touching the Jeep just enough to tip it over the edge."

Bozer opened his mouth to ask more questions, but Jack cut him off. "Kids, we can sort all that out later, _after_ we've found and rescued Mac!"

* * *

When Matty left the interrogation room after a little over two hours of questioning Christensen, she looked outwardly calm and collected as usual, but she wasn't. That guy had just been another dead end. When she met the trio, they were practically running towards her. They were all so full of tension that they were unable to contain it. She raised her hands to stop them, truly worried that they might run her over.

"Slow it down there!" She commanded and the three agents came to a halt right in front of her.

"Sorry!" They all mumbled.

"What did he say? Where is Mac? When are we going?"

She looked at them with uncharacteristic frustration on her face. The look said it all and three faces fell in disappointment.

"He didn't tell you anything." Jack stated flatly. "Come on, let me in there! Please!" He was back to begging.

"No, Dalton! As he cannot tell us what he doesn't know, it wouldn't help to punch and torture him."

Jack made a face like a child whose Christmas presents got stolen. "Matty, we need to-" She cut him off.

"He's a dead end, Jack! After only 10 minutes into interrogation, he couldn't wait to confess every single crime he's committed since he'd first ripped off the lunch money from his classmates at high-school. Those crimes include the murder of Arlington and Higgs, by the way. The Police can deal with him. However, he neither ordered, nor knows anything about MacGyver's disappearance."

"But-"

"If you want a chance to find MacGyver, you need to lay off Christensen and find another trace!"

Riley's face lit up. "I need to check something..."

 _To be continued..._


	7. Chapter 7

**Hi readers,**

 **Here comes the next chapter.**

 **No warnings** **.**

 **Enjoy! ;-)**

 **Unlike the characters and everything else you might recognize, all mistakes are mine!**

* * *

Summary:

A terrible accident – a Jeep, smashed almost beyond recognition – not the slightest trace of a certain blond agent… Eventually, the team have to face the fact that they might have lost their friend forever.

* * *

 **BETWEEN HOPE AND DESPAIR**

Chapter 7

 _Forensics Lab_

Riley had commandeered a workplace in the lab and hooked up her laptop to the largest monitor in the room, in order to make it easier to spot small things on the footage. She was frantically working her way through every satellite or surveillance cam shot of the national forest where the van with the two bodies had been found. As six eyes saw more than two, Bozer and Jill were sitting on both sides of her to help scanning the images. Jack had tried to help at first, too, but he was way too full of nervous energy to sit and stare on a screen for more than a few seconds. This was taking too long! Mac needed them, now! However, he knew that it would be pointless to send a search and rescue party without any lead where to start. The area was vast and rough, passable only by a handful of roads and endless miles of rocky, uneven paths, which were only drivable by off-road vehicles - And obviously old and battered vans.

Jack's gut told him that they were finally getting closer to Mac. He kept talking to him in his head, encouraging him, pleading with him not to give up. He was somewhere out there and Jack was as certain as never before that he was fighting for his life. He knew that Mac's scientific mind didn't believe in such things, but Jack was trying to send him as much hope and positive energy as possible and besides, even though it might sound strange, it helped Jack to keep his sanity. At least, it gave him something good to focus on.

While the other three were searching, Jill filled them in on more details of their findings. Gravel from the accident site was scattered all over the van's floor, mostly in the back and in front of the passenger's seat. Pieces of it had also been found under Higgs' shoes, but not under Arlington's. Obviously, Higgs had done the grabbing, while Arlington had stayed in the car, ready to drive off. There was a different kind of soil stuck to both their shoes, too. Soft, damp forest ground, like the kind you would find in the very forest they were searching right now, and additionally, another kind of gravel. This other dirt was found only in front of the front seats, which lead to the assumption that they'd hidden their captive wherever that stuff came from.

Stored under the passenger's seat, they'd also found a napkin with traces of chloroform and human saliva, which was run through a DNA test and positively matched Mac's. Besides, there was some rope, partly sawed into by some kind of blunt edge, and a bag made of black fabric in just the right size to fit over a person's head. This set of equipment caught Jack's attention.

"They were well prepared for the kidnapping. I still don't get what they wanted with Mac… Or me?"

"That's the million-dollar-question." Jill shrugged.

"What's that?" Bozer suddenly pointed to a spot on one of the countless satellite shots taken two days ago. It was barely visible, but if you looked very closely, you could see the rear end of a light colored van that was just disappearing under the foliage next to the road. All four stared at it.

"There's no official road there." Riley stated. "That van has just vanished into the forest. It must be them!" Jack already had Matty on the line and immediately got clearance to call in whomever he needed and start to follow the hidden path. They had to hurry. It was late afternoon already, which left them only a few hours of daylight. _Finally_ , he got to do something! He was getting his boy back!

* * *

 _Inside a Phoenix transport chopper, 30 minutes later_

The seasoned agent and Ex-Delta-soldier was in his element. The helicopter had just taken flight. Inside with him, there were Bozer and a handpicked assembly of Phoenix search-and-rescue specialists, 2 paramedics and a handful of employees who had spontaneously volunteered to help, when they heard that there still might be a chance to find MacGyver alive. Together, they were 11 well-equipped people.

Riley had stayed back in the lab. As soon as the chopper landed, she'd take control of a video drone and hopefully be able to point them in the right direction. That special drone was equipped with regular video, night vision and infrared, as well as a CO2-detector as an additional gadget. It was expected to ferret out various specimens of the larger local forest fauna, but also to be a valuable tool for finding a living human being. Riley subconsciously crossed her fingers, while she was waiting for the chopper to reach its destination. She dearly hoped that that was what they were looking for.

The flight took only a little more than 10 minutes. When the chopper touched down on the road near the place where the van had disappeared between the trees, the passengers were eager to get out and start working. One of the techs who had volunteered was preparing the drone. She was the first to leave the heli when the door was opened, set the drone safely onto the ground and signaled Riley to start it. The device took off within seconds and was expertly guided and supervised by the hacker. She steered it into the forest and made it hover along the rocky path between the trees, looking around for anything that could give them a lead.

Jack had his team check the coms one last time. They could all hear each other, and had and open line to Riley and Matty at Phoenix. They followed the drone at first, carefully scanning their surroundings for anything that looked out of place. The ground was rocky and very uneven. If Jack hadn't seen the van take this path, he wouldn't have believed that a non-off-road vehicle could manage it, but it obviously did. The reddish rocks beneath their feet didn't show any tire marks, but every now and then the search party came across a displaced piece of rock or a spot where the underside of the van had scraped over the stony surface.

They were on the right track, but their progress was slow. Under the dense foliage of the trees, it was rapidly getting dark. Although the party was equipped with flashlights, it was getting harder by the minute to spot the small and unobtrusive signs that the dirty white van had taken this route. The path twisted, turned and forked several times. Riley's drone weaved in and out of the trees, circling the forest beneath the green ceiling that was blocking the last rays of sunshine of the day. It was equipped for night vision, but the search party on the ground would soon have to call it a day, unless they wanted to take their chances with a hungry bear or other large predator looking for dinner. Riley had already spotted quite a few potential threats in the near vicinity. The forest was a refuge for all kinds of animals and not safe for humans to roam at night. Jack caught himself not caring and wanting to keep searching all night, if he had to, but he knew he had no business risking those people's lives. He had to admit grudgingly that the chances of a successful search would be so much better at daylight the next morning and without the prospect of ending as a free dinner for a hungry bear or mountain lion. Still, it would mean he had to let his kid down once again…

Matty finally called them off. Jack dutifully gathered the fanned-out team members around him and sent them the way they had come back to the helicopter. Naturally, Matty caught up on what he was doing.

"Dalton, I mean all of you!"

Jack froze. "Matty, I can't leave now. We're close, I can feel it!"

"Jack, you won't find anything in that darkness. I'm not losing you to a bear or something! You return to the chopper and come back home now!"

Jack had an idea. "Matty, wait, please! Just one minute."

"What?" Matty didn't even try to hide her annoyance.

"Riley, you can see every animal large enough to eat me with that magical gizmo of yours, right?"

Jack could practically hear her eye-roll. "It has nothing to do with magic, Jack. But yes. And there are enough of them to be more than a match for you, even with all the weaponry you carry around."

"Whose side are you on, anyway?" Jack grumbled just loud enough for the com to pick up. Matty put her foot down.

"Jack, you can't help Mac when you're dead, or missing any major body parts. This is final: You come back here and get some rest. As soon as the sun rises, you'll be back and resume the search. Am I clear?"

Jack didn't respond. There was a war going on inside him.

" _Am I clear?"_

"Technically I'm not even on duty…" Jack tried one last, desperate and absolutely stupid approach. Matty had had enough.

"Dalton, don't you even think about splitting hairs with me! I'll beat you in that department with both my hands tied behind my back. By the way, your people have strict orders to bring you back with them. Unless you plan to shoot them, you are coming back! _Now_!"

Jack looked into the faces of the men and women gathered around him. They were sympathetic, but determined. His race was run and he knew it. Mumbling and grumbling under his breath, he joined the trek back to the chopper.

* * *

 _Meanwhile, not too far away_

Mac had fallen into a fitful sleep. He was having nightmares and didn't fully wake from them. Instead, one just blended into the other, strung together into one endless series of pain and being tortured, by a herd of small demons for instance, which were chewing on his flesh with razor-sharp teeth. They slowly tore narrow stripes of flesh away from his side, cackling shrilly when he moaned, and enjoying his pain and misery as they feasted on him.

Before he even knew it, he was cuffed to a metal chair, the demons were gone and in their place was Murdoc. The psychopath repeatedly pressed a red-hot branding iron to his side and was gleefully grinning at him when he tried to scream and didn't manage, because his mouth and throat were as dry and rough as sandpaper. All he could produce was a hoarse kind of wheeze, as his voice wasn't working at all. A dry, hacking coughing fit shook his abused body.

"Nobody's coming for you. Your friends are convinced you're dead, they've stopped looking for you. It's just you and me and we're gonna have sooo much fun!" Murdoc gloated at him and put the iron aside. He chose the by far worst tool of torture next: When his hand reappeared, it was clutching a bottle of water. Crystal clear, ice-cold water. Mac could tell it was cold by the fine layer of condensed moisture covering the bottle. Murdoc moved slowly and deliberately, making sure that the bottle stayed plainly in Mac's line of sight, when he opened the lid.

"Want some?" He asked casually. He held it in his hand, the opening drawing nearer to Mac's chipped lips. Mac could almost smell the fresh liquid, feeling the cold falling off the bottle onto his chin. He tried not to fall for Murdoc's bait, not to try and reach it, but his craving for a drink was so intense, that his body was reacting without his consent. He tried to lean forward to reach the precious liquid, but his head was firmly held in place by a belt around his forehead, which tied him to the high back of the chair. It was wound so tight that it made his head hurt. It felt like it was putting pressure on his brain. Murdoc brought the water ever closer to his dried out mouth, stopping not even an inch before touching his lips. Mac desperately put out his tongue. He could reach it, just a little farther… He closed his eyes, nearly tasting the water on his tongue already... Before he could touch the first drop, he heard Murdoc laugh hysterically, maniacally, cruelly. He could have cried in frustration, but he had no tears to shed. He should have known that he was never going to get any water. The laughter died and was replaced by a slurping noise. Mac didn't want to watch, but he couldn't help it. Murdoc was sitting opposite him, the upturned bottle at his lips and letting the water flow into his open mouth. He gulped some down as noisily as possible, but most of it just ran down his face and onto his clothes.

"Oops! How careless of me!" He mocked, looking down his drenched front. With a lot of unnecessary theatrics, Murdoc placed the open bottle with one last swallow of water in it into Mac's lap, full well knowing that his captive had no chance of reaching it, as he had taken exceptional care to make sure that his victim couldn't move one little bit. The tormentor rose from his stool and headed for the door, but turned around halfway to look at Mac.

"You don't look too good, Angus. You should take a drink." Mac let his eyes close again. Why couldn't that son of a bitch just shut up? Just this once?

When he opened his eyes next, the scenery had changed yet again. He wasn't locked in anywhere, but his hands where tied behind his back this time. He was walking, or more precise, dragging his feet through hot desert sand, and when he looked around, he saw others who were tied up like him. The group of uniformed and very miserable looking prisoners were surrounded by several heavily armed men, who were hiding their faces behind shawls and scarfs. He had never been this thirsty in his life and he realized that he'd almost entirely stopped sweating. A clear sign that he was an inch away from heat stroke. Several of his fellow captives had already succumbed to that fate.

Whenever one of the captives slowed down, they got hit hard by a rifle barrel. When Mac stumbled and fell to his knees, one of the guards rammed his barrel into his ribs and yelled at him in broken English to get up, but he was too weak and dizzy to get to his feet again. He swayed – and the man shot him. Pain exploded in his side when the bullet entered his body and he was thrown into the burning-hot sand. Lying there, too weak to move and his vision blurring quickly, he watched helplessly as his blood seeped into the sand in a steady stream and he realized that this would be the last thing he'd ever see. "Nobody's missing you!" Murdoc's voice sang in his head as he blacked out.

* * *

 _Jack's apartment_

After yet another night full of nightmares, Jack was up and raising his caffeine level way before dawn. He forced down a stale bagel, which was a leftover from the day before, texted Riley and Bozer, got into his car and took the fastest route to the Phoenix Foundation. His two teammates both wrote back in under a minute; a sure sign that their night had been about as restful as his. It didn't matter, they would sleep when they'd gotten their friend back.

A good thing about driving this early in the morning was the relatively light traffic. OK, it was light compared to the usual standards of Los Angeles, but as Jack was well used to managing the traffic even in the worst rush hour, he could allow his mind to roam elsewhere, while steering his car like on autopilot. It was three days ago that Jack had been woken by Matty and she'd told him that his partner had presumably died in a car accident. It felt like ten years. He also looked like it had been ten years, but only if the judge on that was being nice. Realistically, it looked more like 20.

Today, something was going to happen, one way or the other. Jack had long ago learned to trust his guts and they were now telling him that today was the day when he'd find his friend. What his guts weren't telling him, was whether he'd be in time to save him. Higgs and Arlington had been killed the same day they'd taken Mac, which probably meant that he was on his own since; somewhere in that forest, he was sure of that. If MacGyver was on his own for three days and hadn't yet managed to get back home, or at least signal for help somehow, this could, in this case, only mean one of three options. 1: He was either tied up or locked in too well to free himself or contact anyone. 2: He was too hurt to do either, or 3: He was dead. _No_ , Jack kept telling himself, _3 isn't an option!_

 _Don't you dare dying up on me now, pal!_

During the last 3 days, Jack had repeatedly wondered what he was going to do with his life without Mac at his side. When he first realized that his partner was gone for good, he wanted to quit Phoenix and being an agent immediately, but Matty had refused to accept his resignation. They'd argued and in the end, Jack had grudgingly agreed to wait. He had been taken off duty anyway, along with Riley and Bozer, so he could as well deal with the paperwork later. Because there was absolutely no way he'd stay in this job without his partner. That much was a fact. The two of them worked as a pair only. They trusted each other blindly, they worked together like parts of the same well-oiled machinery. They knew each other so well, that they didn't need many words to understand what the other was thinking, not only in the field, but also in their friendship. They knew what the other needed, and right now, Mac needed Jack to find him, badly! And Jack was going to do just that, and today, he wasn't stopping for anything until he found him!

Jack had reached his usual spot in the Phoenix parking garage already and was now heading for the elevator.

"Hey, Jack! Keep those doors open for me!"

Jack stood in the light barrier to keep the doors from closing and waited for a winded Bozer to catch up.

"Did you run here?" Jack asked him by way of a morning greeting, taking in his heavy breathing.

"Of course not! Mac's the runner, not me. I just saw you arrive and sprinted the distance from my spot to the elevator. Didn't wanna be late, you know?"

"We're early!"

"Riley is already in the War Room, has been for two hours already. She's been scouting out more of the forest with her drone to give us a lead."

Jack was impressed. He hadn't even realized that they'd left the drone there the day before. His girl had used that to start working before anybody else could.

When the two men entered the War Room a couple of minutes later, Riley was steering the little device through the woods. As there was no daylight yet, she was projecting the night vision and infrared camera footage onto the big screen. A smaller corner of the screen was dedicated to a topographical map of the area. Matty was there, too, looking totally awake and alert, as if she'd just enjoyed a good night's sleep, which she most definitely hadn't. Bozer wondered whether that woman needed any sleep at all. He, Jack and Riley were clearly showing every single hour of sleep they were lacking.

The night vision camera showed the greenish outlines of a small wooden house, when Riley landed the device.

"Batteries are dead." She explained, when the camera images flickered and vanished. Jack swore.

"What's that building?" He asked.

"It's an old abandoned ranger station. Would be a good place to hide someone for a while."

"We'll check it out when we get there. Did you get a glimpse inside?"

"Only from the front, but there was nobody in sight. Had to land, before I could get to the back. I'm glad the batteries held long enough to reach it at all. Aimee can replace them when you get there."

"Who?" Jack asked.

"Aimee Vaughan, the tech that brought the drone."

"You'll start in 10 minutes." Matty said. Jack just nodded.

 _Just hang on..._

* * *

The helicopter landed in the clearing closest to the old ranger station this time. It was still gloomy beneath the trees, but they could see where they were going. The group had split into two parties. One, with Jack, Aimee the tech, one of the paramedics and two others went for the former station, the other, with Bozer and the rest of the people, started a search pattern towards the place where they had been forced to stop the day before.

When Jack's team reached the house, they saw that it was old and shabby, but stable. It was more a hut than a house. One story, two rooms, a smaller one to the front and a larger one to the back. Both were completely empty and the thick, undisturbed layer of dust left no doubt, that nobody had been in there for ages. Jack squeezed his eyes shut in frustration, rubbing the back of his neck. He tapped his comm.

"Riley? Nothing in the hut. Anything else to check out?"

"Except for a couple of fire lookouts there are no further buildings around there, except for the new ranger station. As that one is in daily use, they won't have hid Mac there."

"They won't have just tied him to some tree out in the open." Jack was more thinking aloud than talking to anybody. _If they've done that, he's dead for sure..._

Bozer's voice came over the comm. "So we have no further buildings. Fine. But what about natural shelters? I remember that there were a couple of caves mentioned on the map. Riley?"

"Yeah there are; lots of them, actually. Wait! There are three, maybe four that are accessible from the path the van took. If Mac's inside a cave, it's got to be one of them. Bozer, your group is closest. If you move north-east for about two miles, you'll stumble right into one of them."

"Roger!" Bozer and his group confirmed.

"Where do we go?" Jack asked.

"You head straight west and after three miles, you'll reach the path again, close to another cave entrance. I'll try to check out as much as possible with the drone, but I can't fly inside, there will be no reception in there."

Jack and his group followed Riley's directions. Jack was jittery and walked faster without even realizing he was doing so. They'd lost so much time again! He dearly hoped that Mac had not only shelter from the elements and hostile animals, but also at least some food and water. Three days! Mac was gone for three days now. Three days without food sucked, but didn't even come close to being life threatening. Three days without water on the other hand… Depending on temperature, constitution of the person and physical activity, that could very well be terminal. Over in the desert climate of the Sandbox, he'd seen people die of dehydration in only a couple of hours. However, if Mac was indeed inside one of the caves, it was expected to be cool in there, which would considerably extend survival time… Unless he was hurt and losing blood… Which he, judging by the stains in the van, did. Jack picked up speed yet again.

"Riley?" Bozer's voice came over the comm. "Where's the next cave?"

"What's wrong with the first one?" The hacker asked back.

"Uhm… Everything. It's caved in." Jack stopped dead in his tracks and froze.

"Caved in?" His voice shook. "Like… recently?"

Bozer knew why he was asking and hurried to reassure him. "No. By the looks of it, it has happened years ago." Jack let out a breath he hadn't been aware he was holding and resumed his quick walk.

Riley's voice came over the com again. "Bozer? You follow the path west, take a left turn at the next fork and after about half a mile you'll reach the next one." Bozer confirmed.

Thirty minutes later, Jack's group reached their first destination. The entrance was a gap between two tall rocks. The search party switched on their flashlights and looked around in the narrow space. Jack studied the gravelly ground intently, but he didn't find any sign that somebody had been in there lately.

"This isn't it." He declared, disappointment audible in his voice, and the group retreated. When he'd left the cave, he heard Riley's voice in his ear again.

"Jack? I think I found the right one! You go along the path uphill for about 2,000 feet. I landed the drone in front of the entrance. There's soft ground… And tire marks! It's gotta be it!"

Jack felt something like an electric jolt surge through him, when a fresh dose of adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream. They were close! _Hang in there, bud!_

Spurred by new hope, they were almost running towards the spot that Riley had pointed out. The distance felt to Jack like the longest 2,000 feet of his life, even compared with crawling through a minefield while being shot at. His hands were shaking and he was breathing harder than the physical activity justified. After an eternity, they saw the camera drone neatly landed on soft forest ground. It was sitting next to several tire marks and two sets of boot prints. Two? Jack studied them. Judging by the pattern, two men had been carrying something (or someone) between them. Mac! _God, why did they have to carry him?_ Jack remembered the chloroform-soaked napkin and prayed that it was just because he was still unconscious from that, or maybe tied up. The tracks led towards an opening in the rocks, which was partly hidden by low hanging branches. Jack shoved them roughly aside and switched on his light.

"Mac? You here? MAC!" he called out loudly and listened, but got no response. His heart sank, as he proceeded further into the narrow space between the stony walls. He took in every detail. The ground was even and covered in gravel. It looked as though it had once been walked on regularly. There were a couple of low passages, where he had to duck, but finally, the tunnel opened up to and ended in some kind of chamber.

"MAC! Answer, if you can hear me! Buddy!" he yelled again, but to the same effect. He let the beam of his flashlight travel around the space.

It was empty.

A huge lump formed in his throat and he had to blink rapidly. After several deep breaths, he opened his eyes again and stared at the narrow rock, which his flashlight illuminated. A dark spot caught his eye and he got closer to have a look. When he crouched down next to it and examined the reddish-brown streak near to the ground, his insides clenched. It was unmistakably blood! Not much, but combined with the bloodstains found in the van, it meant that Mac had been bleeding enough to soak through his clothes for quite a while. Jack remembered the knife-wound his partner had sustained on their last mission and figured that the stitches must have reopened and by the height of this stain, Mac had likely been tied to that stone. _Shitshitshit!_ He'd been there and now he was gone. They were too late!

Jack felt all the adrenaline drain from his body. He let himself sink to the ground, leaned his back against the rock Mac had been tied to before, drew up his knees, rested his elbows on them and buried his face in his hands. He didn't even try to stop the sobs that shook his shoulders. He was too late! Mac was gone! How were they going to find him now? He had failed him _again_ …

 _To be continued…_


	8. Chapter 8

**Hi readers,**

 **Thank you all so much for your continuing support! I'm really enjoying writing this, but your response makes it a very special experience for me.**

 **Everyone with only a little knowledge about medical things will have noticed by now that I have none at all. This is going to be be even more obvious from now on. I googled a fair bit, but I'm also taking a LOT of - uhm - 'poetic license'.**

 **Anyway, here's chapter 8. Enjoy! ;)**

 **Unlike the characters and everything else you might recognize, all mistakes are mine!**

* * *

Summary:

A terrible accident – a Jeep, smashed almost beyond recognition – not the slightest trace of a certain blond agent… Eventually, the team have to face the fact that they might have lost their friend forever.

* * *

 **BETWEEN HOPE AND DESPAIR**

Chapter 8

Mac was floating in an endless ocean of pain. His entire left side was agony. Each erratic heartbeat sent a wave of heat through his veins. His body was tossed back and forth, as he bobbed on the waves. His stomach churned. He felt nauseous and gagged repeatedly, but he had no strength left to heave. Not that there was anything in his stomach to throw up anyway…

After an eternity, the ground beneath him stilled and turned into cold and rough stone. It still swayed, but it was at least firm enough so he could keep his nausea in check. Well, kind of, but he'd take small favors. Despite the heat in his burned up side, he was freezing. God, it was so cold here, wherever 'here' was. He tried to remember what happened to him and where he was, but thinking actually hurt.

There was a layer of some thick fabric around him and he curled up in it as tightly as possible. He had tried to pry his dry eyes open, but it wasn't worth the bother. For some reason, which he was too weary and hurting to think about, his surroundings were as black with his eyes open as when they were closed. Or maybe he had gone blind. That idea would have scared him beyond measure in any other circumstances, but it left him strangely unaffected now. He knew that he was dying anyway, so what did it matter?

A remote corner of his mind was wondering, though, _why_ he was dying and not knowing anything about that bothered him. Since the moment he'd enlisted for the Army to become an EOD-tech, he'd always been okay with risking his own life, if the gain was worth it, but was it in this case? What had been the mission that had gotten him in this mess? Would the events that would soon result in his death at least help make the world a better place? Did he succeed? He couldn't remember. Were his friends safe?

What he really regretted was that he wouldn't get a chance to say goodbye to them. There was so much he hadn't told them. He really wanted to tell Jack not to blame himself for whatever had happened to him, though he knew that his partner and Overwatch would carry the guilt for the rest of his life. That saddened him. He didn't want Jack to feel guilty about it. In all those years, Jack had always gone beyond the humanely possible to protect him from any harm that might have befallen him. The Texan with the big heart had never let him down, not once. He really should have left him a note or something.

 _Nobody's coming for youuuuu…!_

A really annoying sing-sang voice rang through his head. Where did that come from? The voice sounded familiar, but in a very unpleasant way. By the life of him, he couldn't remember whom it belonged to. All he knew was that it sent chills up and down his spine.

 _You're finally dead, Angus…_

Well, not quite yet, but he would be soon and there was nothing he could do about that.

* * *

 _The cave_

 _Yeah, it's the right one_

Jack neither knew nor cared, for how long he'd been sitting there. He heard the members of his group around him. Some tried to talk to him or touched his shoulder, but all he wanted now was being alone for a minute. He hiccuped something to that accord between sobs and obviously, they'd understood and left. He'd really done his best to keep it together during the last three days, considering the circumstances, but between the emotional rollercoaster-ride, the severe sleep-deprivation, the aftereffects of the concussion, the excitement to have another lead, only to find an empty cave was now really getting to him. _Sorry, brother! I don't have the tiniest hint where they might have taken you now..._

There was, however, still that feeling in the pit of his stomach, which insisted that he was very close. It just wouldn't shut up. Jack blinked and got clumsily to his feet. He felt weary and drained, like he could sleep for a month. He wiped the tears off his face with a sleeve, picked up the flashlight that had fallen out of his hand and shone it around the chamber one more time. While he turned on his own axis, his sharp eyes scanned every detail of the rocks around him. And then, he spotted it: Right in front of him was an ascent, which an averagely fit human could climb without any gear. He looked closer and found that the rocks remotely resembled stairs, and that there were faint but unmistakable footprints on their surface. Jack detected crumbs of the dark forest soil in front of the entrance on them. Someone, presumably Higgs and Arlington, had climbed up there and Jack could think of only one reason for them to do that: Up there was another hiding place!

Again fed with new energy, Jack climbed right up to the top and stopped on a small platform. On first sight, it was another dead end, but Jack knew better this time. Those two guys certainly didn't climb up there for the fun of it. He took in every detail, every little stone that looked out of place and, after a short while, he spotted scratches on the rock that served as a floor there. The grinding marks on the ground indicated that one of the rocks that formed the wall had been shoved to the left and back again. Instantly, Jack put his back against the rock and pushed. It didn't budge. He shifted position, put his foot against the opposite wall, and pushed again. This time, the stone moved several inches. He shoved again and again, and finally, there was a hole large enough for him to crawl through.

"Hey, Mac! It's Jack, your old buddy! Been missing me?" he shouted, trying to sound lighthearted. "MAC!" Jack stared into the pitch-black hole, illuminating it with the beam of his torch. When he neither saw anything, nor got any response, leaden dread filled him up again. He hastily got rid of his backpack, as he wouldn't fit with that on his back, and crawled through the narrow gap. _"MAC!"_ he called again, but in vain. A new lump appeared in his throat, but he forced it down.

Shining the light around the place, he found himself in another chamber. It looked as empty as the first one, but his nose caught a whiff of an unpleasant smell. He sniffed, crinkling his nose. Thankfully, it wasn't a decaying body, but it wasn't healthy, either.

"Mac?" he called again tentatively, but heard nothing. Jack carefully proceeded towards the back wall and stopped when the floor ended. He dropped to his knees and stared into a narrow hole, about 20 feet deep. On the ground, the beam of his torch highlighted a few scattered objects – and a curled up lump that could only be a person huddled up in an old sleeping bag. Dirty blond hair was just visible…

"MAC!" he screamed at the top of his voice and watched closely for a reaction.

* * *

 _MAC!_ A new voice filled his mind. It was screaming, resounding around him, it seemed to come from all directions at once. He knew that voice, too, but he was way too weary and confounded to try and place it.

An intense light assaulted his eyes even through closed lids. He squeezed them shut more tightly and turned away from it. It only stayed for about two seconds and Mac's befuddled mind went back to that voice. Somehow, it meant safety and comfort (Why? Whose was it?), but like that annoying first one, it was only inside his head. Nobody was there and he was going to die here all alone. It wasn't that he was going to know the difference, but he hoped that they'd at least find his body later so he could be buried at home...

 _It's just the two of us! Oh, this is gonna be fun!_

That creepy voice was back. He knew it meant danger and pain. There was another too bright light in his face for an endless moment and then, fingers touched the hair at his forehead. Mac shrank back from them in fright, but couldn't move much. Thankfully, the hand drew back, for whatever reason.

Then, he heard the other voice again. It was soothing, reassuring and comforting. Mac couldn't make out many of the words, but the sound of the voice made him relax a little. Who was it? And what was real and what wasn't? And what difference would it make? He was tired and just wanted to fall asleep.

The voice however kept talking to him. He didn't know why, but it soothed him. It sounded warm, gentle, and most important: It sounded real. It was something solid to hold on to. He even caught bits and pieces of what it was saying.

 _Think you could look at me?_

Mac turned his face towards the voice and tried to comply, but his eyelids weighed about a ton. He couldn't even fulfill that one simple task and hid his face in shame again. Why was he so weak? No wonder everybody was leaving him.

Where did that come from? The inside of his head was a scrambled mess.

A hand started to stroke his arm. He shivered from a bone-chilling cold. The rubbing felt good, but another hand was also peeling him out of the debatable shelter of the sleeping bag and the soaked shirt. Even the gentlest touch was agony and he screamed— No, he didn't, but that wasn't for lack of trying.

 _Mac, can you hear me?_ He tried to answer, but again,nothing came out.

 _Can you open your eyes for me? Just for a moment?_ Forcing his eyelids up took all the strength he could muster, but he could do it. Kind of. For a split-second. There was light and it seemed to burn right through his brain like a laser beam. He dissolved into pain, but at the same time, strong and secure arms held him and saved him from falling apart.

* * *

Jack couldn't be sure, but he thought that he saw the figure shy away from the light and slightly curl up tighter. He'd found him! He'd actually found him, and - he was moving. He was alive!

By a quick assessment of the situation he was not well at all, but _alive_!

The word reverberated in his mind. Alive! 24 hours ago, he didn't think he'd see him ever again, not even for a decent funeral. He looked around frantically and spotted a climbing rope tied to a ledge. Without any hesitation he let down the loose end carefully, tested the rope and, satisfied, quickly descended down the rocky wall. He dropped the last few feet to the ground and got down onto his knees next to his friend, careful not to shine the light directly at his face, as it seemed to hurt him.

It took Jack all the control he could muster not just to scoop up the kid to cradle him in his arms and never let go of him again, but he had to check on his condition.

"Hey kid! You found yourself a great hiding place down here. But it isn't good enough. I still found you." He teased. Trembling fingers very gently touched blond hair. Jack's heart shattered into a thousand pieces, when Mac recoiled weakly, moaning hoarsely and trying to flinch away from his touch.

"Easy, brother! It's me, Jack, your old buddy. I gotcha. We're going home, alright?" His voice was suspiciously unsteady and tears were freely running down his cheeks, when Mac faintly struggled to crawl away from him. Jack drew back in order to spare him more distress. The young man was obviously too out of it to recognize him. Nevertheless, Jack kept talking to him soothingly.

"I'm not gonna hurt you, I promise, but I need to check you for injuries. You OK with that?" Mac's body relaxed a fraction. Whether it was because he realized that he was safe with Jack, or because he was simply too exhausted to keep fighting, he couldn't tell. Whatever it was, the older operative had no way of assessing Mac's condition, as long as the latter showed nothing of himself but a mop of filthy blond hair.

"Think you could look at me?" Mac shifted the position of his head slightly and the older man could tell that he was trying to lift his lids, but to no avail. When he didn't succeed, he hid his face again and looked like a scared toddler. Jack couldn't suppress a sob. "Aw kid, those three days alone down here messed with that genius brain of yours pretty bad, huh?"

Like always when his partner's defenses cracked and he showed pain, weakness or raw emotion, Jack had to remind himself that he was dealing with a grown man pushing thirty and highly capable government agent and not the sixteen-year-old schoolboy he looked like.

Keeping up an endless mumbled stream of soothing nonsense, Jack carefully touched Mac's upper arm and started rubbing it up and down. He felt his partner tremble beneath his hand. The skinny appendage felt hot, even through the thick fabric of the sleeping bag. Jack had to get that off him somehow. He didn't want to scare his friend any more by taking out a knife to cut it open, so he fumbled for the zipper with his other hand and zipped the bag down to Mac's waist. The stench that met him almost made him gag.

"Oh man, you've got a nasty infection going on there, kid." He winced and very carefully shoved the shirt up to get a look at the wound. The shirt was soaked in a fetid mixture of blood and pus, and so was the sleeping bag. Mac's entire left side had turned a nasty shade of red. Jack felt heat radiating from it. Mac curled up tighter again when he felt Jack's touch and made a sound that certainly would have been a pained whimper with properly moistured vocal cords, but came out as nothing more than a wheeze.

"I know, partner, I'm sorry!"

Jack very gently grabbed the back of Mac's head with one hand and turned it to look at his face. The blonde looked terrible! His skin was a very sick shade of pale, with bright red patches on his cheeks from the fever he was clearly running. His face was hollow, lips raw and chipped, eyes surrounded by dark circles and closed lids reddened and covered in dried up crusts.

"Mac, can you hear me?" He wheezed again by way of a reply. "There you go. Can you open your eyes for me? Just for a moment?" Jack caught a glimpse of blue, before the lids closed again, squeezed shut against the dim light. Mac started to shake violently in his hands and his breath picked up speed, when he was hit by a new wave of pain. Jack just held him close while he had to ride it out…

* * *

"JACK!" Jack startled when he heard his name being called from above and looked up into Bozer's face. He'd been so focused on MacGyver, that he'd completely forgotten about the others. "Is he—?" Bozer started and trailed off.

"He's alive, Boze!" Jack called back up and heard the other man whoop. "Go get the paramedics down here, ASAP!"

Bozer's head vanished. Jack held his shivering partner close to his chest, carefully avoiding putting any pressure to his inflamed side. The young man snuggled up to him, seeking for warmth, his face buried into the pit under Jack's chin. Silent tears escaped from brown eyes and dripped into matted blond hair. "I really thought I'd lost you!" Jack repeated over and over, his voice cracking. However, he full well knew, that his friend's condition was alarming. He was badly dehydrated and, on top of that, battling a severe wound infection. He wasn't with it enough to realize entirely where he was or what was going on and he was very, very weak. Jack also couldn't help noticing that he seemed to weigh almost nothing. Mac had always been on the skinny side of healthy, but now, after assumedly three days without anything to eat _or_ to drink, he seemed to be physically fading. Jack shuddered.

There was definitely a bed in medical, which had his name on it.

Jack suddenly felt his patient struggle feebly against his hold, obviously caught in some delirious nightmare. It broke his heart yet again. He was torn between loosening his grip, as being held seemed to distress the blonde, and holding him tighter to protect him from all the atrocities of the world. He compromised by giving him some room to wriggle while he kept rubbing his back gently and muttering reassuringly into his ear. Jack doubted that Mac even knew who he was. Hell, he might not even remember his own name, by the state he was in.

After a few minutes that felt like an eternity, Jack heard movement and voices above his head again. Bozer was back with the paramedics. Jack didn't pay them any attention at all, as Mac had stopped struggling all of a sudden and went completely limp, and still.

Jack had to force down ice-cold waves of panic. Gently but quickly, he laid his friend flat on his back and checked his pulse and respiration. He found the pulse to be thready and racing and the breathing shallow and not sounding healthy. He was beyond relieved, when the two paramedics arrived and took over, but they still had to literally pry Jack off his unconscious friend. They finally handed him a pair of scissors and he cut Mac free of the sleeping bag and shirt. He then sat down by Mac's legs and rubbed them, because he wasn't okay with losing physical contact with him after what he'd been through.

"Was he unconscious all the time?" one of the professionals asked Jack.

"No." he replied. "He was kind of reacting at first, but you couldn't call it coherent. He was pretty out of it. Is he- I mean- gonna be okay?"

The other paramedic was trying to start an IV, which wasn't an easy task with Mac's nearly collapsed veins, due to the severe lack of fluids in his body. The needle ended up in his ankle and Jack was given the task of holding up the bag.

"It's honestly hard to tell here and now. He's severely dehydrated and the risk of organ failure is imminent. Then we're dealing with the infection. We have to get him out of here real quick!"

The answer wasn't really a surprise for Jack, but hearing it like that still scared the crap out of him.

He looked up to the rim. How were they supposed to get Mac up there safely?

Fortunately, the rest of the search party had already been thinking about that. He watched as they lowered a rope towards them, which was fitted with a harness, like the kind you'd use to pick someone up by a helicopter without landing. Someone had obviously ransacked the Phoenix chopper.

While they were securing Mac into the harness, he started to come around. Jack sighed. He would have preferred if the young man had remained out cold for the lift up. Being lifted 20 feet up hanging in a harness while being only semi-conscious would most likely send him straight into a panic-attack. Besides, there was no way to retrieve him from the cramped conditions of the makeshift prison without jostling his injury. The paramedics hadn't dared giving him anything except fluids, because there was the persisting danger of organ failure. So no painkillers for Mac without in-depth diagnostics. Jack was close to tears again. _This is gonna suck!_

Jack stayed close to Mac through the ordeal. Several people carefully heaved Mac's harness upwards very carefully, while the injured man whimpered, cried and pleaded pitifully. He sounded as if he had sandpaper for vocal cords. It was almost Jack's undoing. His vision blurred with tears, as he climbed the wall by his side, using the rope the kidnappers had brought with them, and tried to keep him from hitting the wall in the process and to provide him with as much comfort as possible. It wasn't much.

By the time they reached the top, Mac had passed out again. They maneuvered him through the little opening into the front chamber and out of the cave. A stretcher (also part of the chopper's rescue equipment) was waiting at the entrance. The unconscious agent was placed on it and closely watched by the paramedics and Jack on the onerous march to the chopper. The pilot had moved the aircraft to the closest possible landing spot and Riley guided them there via comm. She was barely able to keep the relief about Mac being alive out of her voice.

Mac was drifting in and out on the way. One of the paramedics had covered his eyes with a piece of cloth to shield them from the daylight. After three days in total darkness, he couldn't even bear the twilight of the forest. Jack stayed by his side, holding up the IV bag that dripped precious fluids into his partner's body.

Inside the chopper, Mac was hooked up to oxygen and some basic monitoring equipment to supervise his vitals. The numbers weren't great, but he was hanging on. The flight back to Phoenix took less than 15 minutes but felt like hours to Jack. Although he was overjoyed that his partner had neither ended as fish food, nor dismally perished in that godawful dark cave, his condition worried him gravely. Permanent damage to vital organs could not be ruled out.

Upon arrival at Phoenix, medical had already been briefed and was waiting for them at the landing area with a gurney. They transferred the patient to it and rushed him inside the building. Jack and Bozer were hardly able to keep up with it and at the double-door to the small but very well-equipped emergency room, they were being held back by a male nurse. Jack tried to elbow him out of the way and follow the gurney with his friend, but the man stood his ground.

"You can't go in there, sir!" He told Jack friendly but determinedly. Bozer grabbed his shoulder from behind.

"Jack, let them work! Mac is in good hands."

Jack knew the drill, of course, but he still wasn't the least bit okay with leaving Mac out of his sight. He was torn between being sensible and forcing entry. Luckily, his common sense – and Bozer's firm hand – won and he very reluctantly took a seat in one of those horrible plastic chairs. Bozer dropped into the chair next to him.

Then they started waiting.

* * *

Bozer and Jack had honestly no idea for how long they'd been sitting there. Riley had joined them after a while. All three shot up from their seats, when Matty entered.

"Good work!" She nodded at the trio and vanished through the forbidden double door they were all staring at. For her, it wasn't forbidden, of course.

"Matty, how-?" Jack began, but she was already gone. He paced nervously, which wasn't exactly easy in the small waiting area. With every round, he had to climb over Riley's and Bozer's legs. The waiting area at Phoenix medical wasn't designed to hold a bunch of visitors. Especially not visitors determined to walk a hole into the floor. _What is taking so damn long?_

Matty reemerged after maybe half an hour and beckoned them to follow her. Her three worried employees bombarded her with questions. She waved them all off.

"He has been through a lot and is in a rough state, but if no new complications arise, he's expected to pull through." She stated. That didn't entirely reassure anybody when it came to whether Mac was going to fully recover. They followed their boss through the now empty emergency room and were led to the ICU that Phoenix kept in case one of their patients needed a closer monitoring. Like Mac did now. Matty stopped in front of the door and turned to face her agents.

"You may go in to see him, but only for a few minutes and only one at a time. And he'll probably be sleeping. He needs plenty of rest."

The three communicated for a couple of seconds with looks only and Riley and Bozer took a step back to let Jack enter. He put on the obligatory protective clothing, to minimize any further risk of infection for the patient, opened the door and hesitantly approached the only bed in the dimly lit room.

The first thing Jack noticed was a whole lot of machinery around the bed. Different kinds of tubes and wires stuck out of them and ended somewhere under the comforter that covered the slim figure in the bed. Jack didn't want to think about what they were all for and concentrated on the sleeping man in front of him. Mac lay curled up on his good side, which was probably the only position that didn't press upon the very sensitive area around the infected cut. An IV line was leading to the foot end of the bed, so the needle was likely still in his ankle. Jack moved the only chair (another one of those uncomfortable plastic thingies) and placed it next to the bed, so that he would be sitting in Mac's line of sight if the blonde had his eyes open. Instead, he was fast asleep. Jack took in his features.

He found that he looked gradually better than he had done in the cave. At least he'd been cleaned up and had gained a shade or two of color. In addition, he seemed a little less 'dried out'. A nasal cannula was feeding him oxygen, the IV in his foot provided the fluids, nutrition and medication he was lacking so badly and his heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation were constantly monitored and recorded. A device that looked like some kind of pump caught his eye. A dark red liquid, clearly blood, was steadily pumped through it through clear tubes that ended somewhere under Mac's bedding. Jack knew what that machine was and his heart sank. The young agent was hooked up to a dialysis machine. Had his kidneys failed? Would the damage be persisting?

Jack desperately craved to see those blue eyes open, but he refrained from waking the man. He knew that resting and therefore giving his body time to recover and heal was the best he could do now. He just sat next to him and talked in a very low voice.

"You know, I still can't get over it how close I came to losing you this time, just because I wasn't looking in the right place for so long. Hell, if that note with my number hadn't turned up-" He trailed off, unable to go on. They'd never gotten the idea that there might even be a chance that Mac hadn't found his wet grave in the endless vastness of the Pacific. So many coincidences had first led into the entire mess and then another set of improbabilities resulted in a rescue at a time when everybody had already stopped believing in a miracle.

"It's up to you now, brother. You take the time you need to get better, OK? You're safe now, I got you."

 _To be continued…_


	9. Chapter 9

**Hi readers,**

 **It's finally finished, sorry for the long wait!**

 **I immensely enjoyed writing this story. When I started, I never expected it to become that long, but I got a bit carried away with it. It was a real fun-trip for me and you guys have been awesome! Thanks so much for reading my story and encouraging me in so many ways! I will miss this story, now that it's finished, but I'm also very happy that I wrote it.**

 **Now enjoy the last chapter!**

 **Unlike the characters and everything else you might recognize, all mistakes are mine!**

* * *

Summary:

A terrible accident – a Jeep, smashed almost beyond recognition – not the slightest trace of a certain blond agent… Eventually, the team have to face the fact that they might have lost their friend forever.

* * *

 **BETWEEN HOPE AND DESPAIR**

Chapter 9

 _The cave_

Why was dying taking so damn long? Mac certainly didn't want to die, but as it was inevitably happening now, he just wanted it to be over. He had never given much thought to what it would feel like, but he definitely didn't expect it to be like this. Somehow, he'd hoped for the pain to subside at some point, but it didn't. On the contrary, it hurt like a bitch! Not to mention all the other irritating and most uncomfortable sensations he was experiencing: something that felt like hands all over him, being strapped into something, being lifted and carried, laid down repeatedly on various surfaces, light that was first burning right through his brain and was then dimmed to a more tolerable level, being poked and prodded…

Then there were the voices inside his head… Some sounded familiar, some not so much. Sometimes they seemed to be close to him and sometimes far away or muffled, like underwater, or fading in and out like a badly tuned radio. Most of the time he couldn't make out what they were saying. Neither could he place whom they belonged to. However, one voice was with him all the time. That voice was very familiar. It meant warmth, safety and comfort. Mac wracked his aching and only partially working brain to come up with a name… John? Jim? No… Jack! That was it. The hallucination of Jack made it all a little more bearable. Although he knew that it was a hallucination and his partner wasn't really there, hearing his voice was still comforting. Mac clung to that.

A small and still halfway working part of his scientific mind struggled to make sense of all those strange perceptions. He understood the processes that take place in a dying body. Organ functions and nerve activity would gradually cease, the slowly ceasing metabolic processes and the therefore accumulating toxic substances in the bloodstream easily explained the disorientation, fading awareness and hallucinations. In the end, the body would no longer be able to maintain sufficient breathing and circulation to provide the brain with oxygen, which would first cause the dying person to lose consciousness and only very few minutes later lead to irreparable brain damage and death.

So far, however, his nerves were still working at full capacity. Especially those in his injured side were firing pain stimuli just fine. At one point he felt like floating upwards - no, more like being dragged, and that sucked! If Jack's voice hadn't constantly been in his ear, he didn't know how he would have made it through that. The pain level was beyond anything he'd ever endured and due to total exhaustion he was unable to keep up his usual defenses and coping techniques. It hit him full-force. He was dimly aware of screaming, pleading and begging for it to stop and after an eternity, it did.

MacGyver didn't believe in an afterlife of any kind, so he was seriously wondering what was happening to him. After some more floating, drifting, people scurrying around him and clinging to Jack's voice in his head, he was finally warm and decently comfortable. The pain was numbed down to a manageable level at last and as he relaxed gradually, he felt total exhaustion take over every single fiber of his body and his mangled thoughts finally dissolved in darkness.

* * *

 _Phoenix Foundation_

 _Medical facility_

Jack point-blank refused to leave Mac's bedside for anything more than a quick dash to use the bathroom – and for a talk with the doctor to get details of his friend's condition. When the short man with the greyish hair invited him into his office, Jack was so nervous that he was visibly shaking. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides and he ground his teeth so hard that they hurt.

"Come in and have a seat, Agent Dalton," he invited him in a professional but nonetheless friendly tone of voice and offered his hand for a shake. Jack took it.

"I'd rather stand, if you don't mind, Dr. Clarke." He immediately started to pace the room, not able to contain his nervous energy. "Let's postpone the small talk until later. How's he?" Jack was aware that he sounded a bit rude, but the doctor had known him for long enough to know that it was nothing personal. He needed facts and the doctor was about to give them.

"Agent MacGyver is severely dehydrated, had reopened his stitches, caught a nasty infection in the wound, has started to turn septic, is running a high fever and has numerous bruises and scratches."

That was about what Jack had already guessed himself. "And that means what exactly…?"

"Apart from getting him rehydrated and nourished, we have him on strong antibiotics to fight off the bacteria causing the infection and put him on a temporary dialysis to help his kidneys recover. His renal values are quite concerning."

Jack swallowed. "It's temporary?" he tried to reassure himself.

"We hope so. If he responds well to the antibiotics and we get the infection and the fever under control quickly, we expect his kidneys to recover. In that case, we just need to take the stress off them for a couple of days with the dialysis." There was a big "If".

"And what will happen if he doesn't respond to the medication?" he forced himself to ask.

"Let's not go there just yet," Dr. Clarke replied in a soothing voice. "We've seen this particular patient defy the odds more than once. It's already a miracle he was rescued it time, thanks to you and your team and his legendary stubbornness. Did you know that it looks like he survived on his own urine down there?"

Jack had stopped pacing and was heavily leaning with his back against the closed door. The mere thought made his stomach churn and he grimaced in disgust, but nodded. It made perfect sense, of course. If there was even the smallest chance of surviving, Mac would use it, no matter what, and Jack was inexpressibly grateful for that. The kid was alive and safe now, and that was the only thing that mattered. Whatever happened next, they'd deal with when it occurred. Jack rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling very tired.

"You should go home and get some rest as well, Agent," the doctor suggested. "You look dead on your feet. There's nothing you can do here now. Your partner will be asleep for quite a while. We have him on a light sedation to give his body the rest it needs to recover." Jack stared at him, shell-shocked by the mere idea of leaving.

"I'm not going anywhere except back into that room to sit on that torture-thingy you have for a chair in this place, until I'm 100 % sure that Mac's gonna be okay!" he protested in a low growling voice. He'd been incredibly compliant until then, for Mac's sake, but he'd at last reached the end of his tether. Neither the doctor, nor the nurse on duty, nor Matty had been able to convince him to let his partner out of his sight anymore, not even for a minute. He reclaimed his post in that pathetic excuse for a chair, watching Mac sleep as if he feared that the young man would vanish into thin air as soon as he looked the other way for a second. He had his kid back and he wasn't going to leave him for anything short of deadly force.

Nobody questioned his stay again after the first time Mac panicked. All of a sudden, he started writhing and struggling, eyes wide open in fright but not seeing anything of the room he was in. Jack jumped and immediately started to talk him down in a low, comforting and reassuring tone, very gently rubbing his upper arm.

"Easy, buddy, easy! You're okay, you're safe."

Glassy blue eyes stared right through Jack at horrors only they could see. The blonde, still too weak to do much more than twitch, flinched at Jack's touch and a hoarse whimper escaped his lips. The older man couldn't help noticing how vulnerable and breakable he looked. Caught in some nightmare, or flashback, or whatever this was, he was just a terrified kid who had to shoulder more at his young age than most people could endure in a lifetime.

"C'mon, brother look at me! It's me, Jack, I've got you." He waved a finger in Mac's line of sight and after a short while, he saw the blue eyes sluggishly follow the movement. He flicked his fingers twice and the gaze became more focused with each slow blink of those reddened eyelids. A layer of a healing cream covered the raw skin there, as well as the chapped lips.

"Mac? You with me, bud?"

Jack watched as a cascade of emotion washed over the pale face on the pillow. There was fear, sadness and forlornness, but also realization and a glint of hope, when bloodshot blue eyes finally met brown ones.

"J'ck?" It was a croaky, broken sound that hardly resembled a voice, but to Jack it was the sweetest music he'd ever heard in his life. "Y' real?"

Something pulled painfully at Jack's heart, but he smiled at Mac, took one of his trembling hands between both his large, calloused ones and squeezed it gently.

"Yeah, Mac, it's me. I'm real, see?" He felt the slender fingers move between his palms as if they needed to make sure that he was really and truly there. He shifted his grip and rubbed the groping fingers with his thumbs.

Mac made a rasping noise in his throat, coughed feebly and winced in pain. Jack remembered the Styrofoam cup that the nurse had left on the bedside table.

"Want some ice?"

The blonde's face lit up in anticipation and Jack took a spoon, fished one of the ice chips out of the cup and carefully placed it in the younger man's mouth. He sucked on it greedily.

"More?" he asked longingly, with a little more tone in his voice.

"In a minute. Let's see how your stomach takes it first."

Two well-tolerated ice chips later, Mac's eyelids started to droop and he frantically fought to keep them open. Jack grabbed his hand again.

"You need rest, kiddo. You can relax now."

"Stay—pl'se?" he slurred. The frightened and pleading expression that was visible for a split second before the lids slid closed broke Jack's heart, again. The hand between his had already gone slack and he gripped it more tightly.

"I'm not going anywhere. I'll be right here, when you wake up. I'm not letting go of you until you ask me to, I promise!" he swore solemnly and received a contented sigh in return, as Mac relaxed visibly and drifted off peacefully. Jack settled for a long and very uncomfortable wait, but he couldn't think of anything he'd rather be doing.

* * *

Riley and Bozer were standing in the hallway to Mac's room and watched the scene through the glass pane in the door. Both were barely able to contain their emotions.

"He looks so fragile." Bozer stated. As Mac's roomie, he was used to seeing him asleep, but he couldn't remember that he'd ever seen him this defenseless. The ex-Delta was clutching his hand as if he expected the blonde to fall apart as soon as he let go of it. Every time when the sleeping man started to twitch and moan in distress, Jack rubbed the long fingers reassuringly and calmly talked to him, until he relaxed again and slept on peacefully. Riley spoke in a faraway voice:

"He's really back, right? I'm not dreaming this?" Bozer reached over and pinched her in the arm. "Ow—Yeah, thanks!" She hadn't woken up. She was still standing in the hallway with Bozer, Jack was still sitting next to the hospital bed on the other side of the door and Mac was still sleeping in that bed, recovering. She heaved a deep relieved sigh. She'd hardly started to process the fact that the young genius, whom she regarded as a brother, had been taken away from them, completely out of the blue, by a freak accident. She had yet refused to dwell on the possible aftermaths of that loss, on the impact it would have on their little family. Jack would very likely have been devastated beyond repair.

Bozer observed the scene with misty eyes. He, too, had a _lot_ of processing to do in the near future. He and Mac had been best friends since childhood. He had almost gone crazy with worry, when Mac had broken it to him that he'd enlisted to the Army, and every single day he'd feared that his friend would come back in a box, or not at all. Luckily, Mac had returned, with more than his fair share of mental issues from having seen combat, but physically mostly unharmed. Besides, he had met Jack there. Bozer couldn't know a lot of details, because most of the stuff they'd been doing in Afghanistan was still classified, but from what he knew, he'd concluded that Jack had gone to any length to make sure that Mac made it home in one piece. At first, Bozer had felt a bit jealous of Jack, when he realized how close the two of them suddenly were, but all of them had quickly found their place in the little surrogate family they now formed. Jack didn't take Bozer's place as Mac's brother / best buddy from him. He was more of a father figure; stepping in as the dad Mac never really had and always yearned for. Besides and most importantly, Bozer thought that he'd never be able to thank Jack enough for protecting Mac over in the Sandbox and helping him through the aftermath that had followed their return. He didn't think he would have been able to deal with his roomies nightmares, flashbacks and all the dark places his overactive mind used to take him almost every night during the first few weeks after his service. Jack had been his anchor and his lifeline whenever things went bad.

The way Jack was now keeping watch over the sleeping kid (no, not a kid, but he exactly looked like one) melted Bozer's heart like a piece of butter in a furnace. No matter how much he himself longed to touch Mac, just to reassure himself that he was really back, - alive, warm and breathing – he realized that in the state the blonde was in at the moment, he desperately needed Jack at his side. Jack provided safety and comfort. His presence allowed Mac to get the rest he so urgently needed to heal. Right now, Jack was the only person who was able to scare away the demons that haunted his nightmares.

Bozer startled when he felt Riley's hand on his shoulder.

"Let's check on them later."

Bozer nodded silently and both left the corridor.

* * *

It took Mac two full days of intensive monitoring, regular blood-tests and medication until the doctors were satisfied enough with his lab test results to take him off the dialysis. He was a lot more relieved than he cared to admit, that no persistent damage to his kidneys had happened, or to any other vital organ for that matter. That prospect had secretly freaked him out. When it gradually became clear that his body was coming back to functioning the way it was supposed to and he felt better by the hour, he immediately remembered why he hated to be in medical, or anywhere that even remotely resembled a hospital. He was so bored, that he almost missed all the equipment they'd had him on. As soon as he had been coherent enough, he'd started to think about what he could turn it into. It was quite a lot…

However, no amount of bargaining changed the fact that he needed to stay on the antibiotics at least for a week. As he was receiving them via IV, he was stuck. The medical staff was looking forward to it about as much as Mac was. Not at all. Luckily, his friends did their best to keep him entertained and to discourage him from following through with any potential escape plans his big brain might come up with. On the other hand, Mac knew, of course, that he had to stick to the antibiotics, because breeding any antibiotica-resistant bacteria inside his body was most definitely not on his bucket list. Therefore, he stayed. Grudgingly.

By now, Jack looked as if he belonged in the hospital bed instead of Mac, who was clearly on the mend. Disconnected from all the medical equipment except for the IV, relocated to a regular room and fever-free, MacGyver looked and felt not quite back to normal yet, but he was visibly on the right track. Jack, however, had dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, and when he walked, he moved almost like twice his age. Besides, it had gotten impossible to be in the same room with him and ignore the fact that he was in dire need of a shower and a change of clothes. Throw in a shave and a good night's sleep on something more comfortable than a hospital visitor's chair and he might turn back into a human being. So far, Mac had failed miserably in convincing him to do that.

A soft knock on the door announced the arrival of another visitor. Mac called them in and Riley poked his head in.

"Mac? You awake?" She grinned when she saw the agent sitting up in bed, talking urgently to Jack, who sat in the chair next to his bed and looked miserable, albeit determined. Mac gestured her to come in and she did so, followed by Bozer. The latter was carrying a large cardboard box, which he sat down on the square table in a corner of the room. Mac looked at it delightedly, instant recognition on his face. He knew that box.

"You brought work! Great!" he exclaimed, grinning.

"We didn't want you to sneak out of here to get your hands on something to fix, so we brought your 'projects' here," Bozer explained. Mac's fingers twitched as if they were already working on something. Riley came over to his bed and hugged him. While her ear was close to his face, he secretly whispered in her ear:

"We need to kick Jack's butt home and into a shower. He's refusing so far, but now that you're here –" Riley sniffed the air in the room and wrinkled her nose. She didn't beat about the bush, when she addressed the ex-Delta.

"Go and get that shower already, Jack! You stink to heaven!" In an urgent kind of stage-whisper she added, "The nurses are already complaining!" At that, Jack straightened, looking alarmed.

"The nurses? That dark-haired one, too? With the green eyes and the dimples? You know, Larissa?"

"Clarice," the hacker corrected, while Mac and Bozer stifled laughs, "and yes, her too. You can't blame her, by the way. It's gross by now!"

"Be right back," he said to Mac and was out of the door. A second later, his head reappeared. "You two keep an eye on our boy for me!" he ordered the newly arrived visitors. Riley shook her head in disbelief, but couldn't quite hide a fond smile.

"Mac's not going anywhere. Go," Riley shot back, "and while you're at it, grab some sleep, too! You're a mess!"

Jack's head vanished and the door closed with a snap. The three agents in the room sighed in relief and Mac put into words what they all had been thinking.

"Finally!"

* * *

 _Mac and Bozer's place, a week later_

Mac couldn't remember ever being this happy to come home, although he had a strong hunch that Jack and Bozer would raise their mother-henning on him to a whole new level for quite a while from now on. And sure enough, as soon as Jack had parked the car in the driveway, he dashed over to the passenger's side to help Mac out of the car.

"I can get out by myself just fine, Jack!" the younger man complained, slightly irritated.

"Lemme help! You don't wanna face-plant in your driveway, bud!"

"I won't!"

"You just got released by medical and your blood-pressure is still—"

Mac interrupted. "That's exactly the point: I got released! Officially. I didn't check myself out. I'm perfectly fine to walk up my driveway without assistance and my blood-pressure might still be a little lower than usual for me, but it's within normal range. Shall I spell it out for you? N-O-R-M-A-L, Jack!" With that, Mac swung his long legs out of the car and straightened up without the slightest hint of a dizzy spell or anything. "See? I'm good."

The older man watched him with a doubtful frown, as if he was half expecting his friend to drop dead on the spot. He sighed. The kid had a history of disregarding his own well-being over everybody else's, as well as hiding injuries and other health issues in order to avoid hospital stays, but this time, Jack had pestered the entire medical staff into making 200 % sure that Mac was fine before even considering releasing him. (Of course, Mac had lectured him on the impossibility of more than 100 % in this case, but Jack couldn't have cared less if he'd tried.) He was aware that he was acting like a helicopter parent, but he could barely restrain himself. He reluctantly let Mac walk by himself, but kept within arms-length of him to be able to catch him, just in case. Mac gave him his most-annoyed sideway eye-roll, but didn't say anything.

The two Phoenix agents were greeted at the door by Bozer, who was wearing his favorite 'Kiss the cook'-apron and a wide grin. Seeing his roomie standing in front of the door made Bozer incredibly happy and he opened his arms wide to invite him for a hug, a questioning look on his face. Mac simply stepped forward and wrapped his arms around him. Bozer blinked rapidly and had to clear his throat to get rid of the lump that had formed in there again. "Lunch is ready." He said into Mac's ear with a croaky voice. The blonde had already noticed the delicious scents wafting over from the kitchen and judging by his nose, the hobby-cook had once again surpassed himself. Flanked by Jack and Bozer, Mac entered the living room.

"SURPRISE!" Riley and Matty stood up from the couch upon his entry and greeted him joyfully.

"Welcome back, Blondie!" He bent down to hug Matty briefly but warmly.

Riley didn't trust her voice and went for a silent hug. Mac felt her swallow and struggle to get her breathing back under control. He hugged her tightly, his chin lightly resting on top of her head, to give her time to regain her composure. Jack stepped forward as soon as they broke apart. Mac just rolled his eyes and threw Matty a resigned look, earning a mock helpless shrug in return, when he allowed Jack to steer him towards the couch and have him sit down.

Within the next minutes, his friends piled enough food in front of him to feed an army. Mac gaped incredulously at the growing mounts of food on the table. He caught Bozer by the sleeve, when he placed a large bowl of baked potatoes on the last free spot.

"You know I'm supposed to go easy on my stomach for a while, don't you?" He laughed.

"I'll personally make sure you put those pounds you lost back on. You didn't have any body-fat to spare in the first place."

"I'm never gonna hear the end of this, aren't I?"

"You got that right! At least not before you fit into your clothes again." Bozer grinned at him broadly. Mac looked down his admittedly too thin frame, then from face to face and back at the laden table.

"Guys, I'm gonna need your help on this!" He declared with a slight hint of desperation in his voice. Jack arranged his face into a concerned frown.

"Now I'm truly worried! Mac's asking for help? We're in deep shit!" They all laughed; Mac rather sarcastically.

They grabbed plates and cutlery, sat down around the table and started to eat. Bozer and Jack had clearly made 'fattening Mac up' their top-priority mission. They were sitting on either side of Mac and whenever the blonde had managed to clear a spot on his plate, one of them would immediately fill it with more food. Matty and Riley watched the spectacle with growing amusement, until Mac put down his fork, raised his hands in defeat and leaned back in his seat with a heavy sigh.

"You shove one more bite down my throat and I swear I'm gonna burst!"

The two 'men on a mission' immediately protested. "You need plenty of energy to regain your strength!" - "You can't be full! You hardly ate!" Bozer pointed accusingly at Mac's full plate. Mac glared at him, shaking his head, but refrained from commenting on the fact that it was only full because it kept refilling itself faster than he could eat.

"Seriously guys, I feel like a darning goose."

Bozer's face fell. "Do you mean to tell me that you aren't even gonna try the dessert?"

Mac looked at him in horror. "Listen, Boze, I really appreciate all this," he gestured at the table that still held enough food to feed the entire neighborhood, even after five people had eaten more than their fill, "but the human stomach has a maximum capacity of not much more than a liter and I've surely reached breaking point for mine. So if you don't plan on making me sick -" He left the half-sentence hanging there, looking around with a pleading expression on his face. Thankfully, they took pity on him and graciously allowed him to skip dessert. In fact, they were all so stuffed, that nobody felt much like eating any pudding on top. Mac looked from the table to Bozer and back. "We're gonna need a bigger freezer," he stated dryly. Bozer looked a little crestfallen, but he couldn't eat anything else, eitherr.

* * *

After the leftovers had been stowed away and the living room and kitchen were mostly back to their usual tidy and clean state, the five Phoenix agents had moved outside to gather around the fire-pit on the deck. Bozer was handing out drinks to everybody. Mac bumped his plastic water bottle to Jack's beer and took a long sip. He enjoyed finally being back home and among his friends, though it felt kind of strange, too. A little more than a week ago, he'd been _dying,_ in total darkness, alone, confused, in agony and scared. In the end, he'd given up hope of ever seeing any of his friends again and now, they were all around him in his own home and he was not only alive, but almost feeling back to normal. They hadn't given up on him and had kept searching until they'd found him, literally in the last minute. He felt an enormous wave of gratitude wash over him, when he looked at them.

"Thank you!" he said, his gratefulness very apparent in those two simple words. The others turned to him and Jack spoke.

"Anytime, brother. Don't you dare trying to check out on me _ever_ again!" The other three agreed, nodding fervently.

"I can assure you that I most definitely didn't have any intention to do that!"

"Well, you gave it a pretty good shot this time! We really thought we'd never see you again! When Matty told me that your Jeep had fallen down the cliff and you were gone-" He trailed off, fighting to regain his composure.

While Mac was still in medical, they hadn't really talked about what happened on both ends while he was missing. Therefore, he was curious now.

"Care to fill me in on how you managed to find me in that cave, when you thought that I'd drowned in the Pacific? Not that I'm complaining, or anything…"

" _That_ ," Jack began, "is a long story! Maybe, before we get started on that, could _you_ please tell me what two dead minions of some loan shark have been doing with my phone number in their pocket?"

Mac blinked, momentarily not quite following. "Dead - What? What loan-shark?"

"Tell me your story, and I'll tell you mine."

"Alright, I'll make it quick, just the essentials: My tire popped, the Jeep crashed into the railing, came to a halt balanced on the rim, I got out, a van came along, skidded, knocked my Jeep down, almost ran me over, two guys grabbed me, asked me for a number for a ransom call, I told them to call you, they put me in that hole and never returned. That was about it." He took a deep breath, before he went on. "I really thought I was a goner this time… So who were those guys and what happened?"

"I'd kinda hoped you'd elaborate a little more, but I'll let it slide for now. So… where do I start?"

Riley and Bozer didn't find the right words to start, either, so Matty spoke up, looking very serious. "I'd say it started when I was notified that a car, which had crashed into the ocean, had been identified as your Jeep. Everything looked like you'd—you'd fallen down with it. We immediately started a search with everything we've got, but essentially, we didn't have much hope of finding you alive… if at all."

Mac sat very still, suddenly mesmerized by the half-empty water bottle in his hand. He was absentmindedly swirling the water in it around with small movements of his wrist. "I'm sorry," he murmured. Jack put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it.

"Hey, it wasn't your fault, bud!"

"I know it wasn't, but still—"

"What?"

Mac intently watched the liquid in his bottle, when he reversed the direction of his swirling, producing a dozen tiny whirls for a second, before the current flowed the other way round. "I should have stayed with you. You were hurt," he said so softly, it was hardly more than a whisper. Jack had to strain his ears to catch it.

"Listen, Mac, I don't even want to imagine what two days alone in that godforsaken cave, dehydrated and with a fever did to your hyperactive mind, but I want you to stop feeling guilty about it, right now! It. Wasn't. Your. Freakin'. Fault!"

The blonde squeezed his eyes shut for about ten seconds, while he processed what his friend had just said. When he opened them again, his expression had changed. The forlornness and guilt that had been prominent in those blue eyes before had successfully been compartmentalized away to be dealt with later… Or never. Jack made a mental note to make sure to bring it back up on occasion to sort it out.

"So if you thought I was fish food, what gave you the idea to explore a cave in that national forest?" Mac asked so matter-of-factly, as if they were casually discussing their last weekend. Jack winced and Riley took the question as her cue to join the conversation.

"In short, we figured out who the van, which came along the road shortly after your crash, belonged to, a guy named Robert Arlington. Does that ring any bells?"

"They didn't introduce themselves. I never got their names."

"Never mind," Riley went on. "At first, we wanted to find and ask them what they'd seen and why they drove by an obvious accident site without at least calling anyone, but that was, when it got really weird."

"What happened? Jack said they were dead?" Mac asked, feeling sorry for the lives lost, no matter what they'd done.

"Yeah, they were murdered by their boss, the same day you vanished."

Mac frowned, remembering the conversation that he'd overheard while he was feigning unconsciousness in the back of the van. "They were on the run from their boss, because they screwed up. They were supposed to kidnap a girl for him. They knew he was gonna kill them and wanted to run for it; leave the country or something. They needed money, so they decided to try and use me as a hostage for ransom."

"OK, that explains that sheet of paper..." Riley murmured, lost in thought. "Anyway, we were trying to find Arlington and Higgs, when they turned up dead inside their crashed van. Later, I accessed their case file and discovered pictures of everything that was found on their bodies – including Jack's phone number in your handwriting." She took a deep breath and Bozer took over, finally having found his voice.

"Man, I'll never forget how all your stuff was scattered all over that table in the forensics lab, soaking wet, and Jill explaining how the accident happened! Everything fit together and it all pointed to you being- gone – for good!" Bozer blinked tears out of his eyes. "But when Ri found that piece of paper in the police file, we finally knew that you couldn't have died in the fall and that those two guys must have had something to do with your disappearance. So we grabbed their boss, a ruthless loan-shark and soul seller."

Jack jumped in. "When Matty was finished with him, we knew that he'd murdered his former employees, but didn't know anything about you or where you could have gotten to. So we started searching again. Riles found a satellite shot of their car in the forest and we followed the trail. It still took till next day, though, to finally find you. We were almost too late..." He trailed off, the memory of his barely alive partner still very vivid in his mind.

"But you weren't too late. Thanks for never giving up on me!"

The group fell silent, awkwardly looking at each other. Jack shifted uncomfortably on the wooden bench and looked into the flames instead of at his friend's face.

"Well… To tell ya the truth…. For a while… Actually, we kinda- did!" he mumbled reluctantly. "If that phone number hadn't turned up in the file-" He trailed off, not able to finish the sentence.

"Yeah, well, but the point is, that it did, and that you found it and that you drew the right conclusions. We're dealing with narrow misses all the time."

"No, Mac, this was different," Bozer interjected. "It's hardly ever been this close! Besides, it didn't even happen on a mission! You manage to almost get yourself killed on a freakin' vacation trip!"

"Yeah," Riley confirmed, "Your vacations turn out to be more dangerous than many of our missions!"

Mac opened his mouth to reply, but Jack beat him to it.

"Speaking of vacations… Matty, you know what you gotta do next time when Mac hands in his next request for time off?"

Mac knew exactly what was coming, but he was hopelessly outnumbered, when everybody else chorused like one voice:

"Reject it!"

.

.

 _The End_

* * *

 **So, that's it. Thanks so much for joining me for the ride. I hope I was able to wrap it up nicely in the end and clear up most of the confusion you might have suffered along the way.**

 **I also hope that I didn't mutilate the English language too badly. I did my best, I promise! ;-) In case you find any major blunders, it would be great if you pointed them out to me, so I can fix them.**


End file.
